Lifeline guided Unmanned Aerial System

APPLICATIONS

Three areas are identified as being of critical and immediate interest to industries wishing to use Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) capabilities:

1. Newsgathering: Visual line-of-sight operations in urban areas;
2. Precision Agriculture;
3. Critical Infrastructure Surveillance: Beyond visual line-of-sight in rural/isolated areas.

By proposing an UAS interconnected to a lifeline, we may address these points without any safety regulatory constraint.

DESCRIPTION

The solution proposes to connect an UAS onto a lifeline in order to perform SHM (Structural Health Management) or surveillance operations. A electronic ring allows the connection with the wire providing the UAS with real-time evolution information. The UAS naturally follow the lifeline to address its specific mission with no human intervention.

It is particularly adapted to situations where a lifeline is installed to perform classical human inspection intervention and may be a substitution solution to some of them according to the inboard sensor.

BENEFITS

The lifeline guided UAS will propose a device:

• Design to fit to classic lifeline components;
• Flying in total safety: Avoid any regulatory constraint;
• Fully autonomous device: no need for human guidance;
• Usable within ATEX environments;
• Directly operational on lifeline equipped structures.

IP

This technology is protected by a patent application