Blogs
Very excited at Monssi to be involved here with the early stages of the exciting preparations going on in Birmingham.
This aerial footage shows the first stages of the site work at the former Smithfield Market site in Birmingham City Centre, starting with archaeological investigations.
What an amazing perspective drone surveys can offer, not only sky high but giving such insight on the ground too.
Introducing our newest member of the team, Molly Monssi.
Our digital colleague, Molly is the voice of Monssi, helping us to showcase our specialist aerial drone survey services including those for buildings, underground caverns and archaeology.
Hope you like her as much as we do!
Researchers from Queensland University of Technology in Australia have developed a new algorithm to help identify koala population numbers.
Traditionally, human spotters on the lookout for koalas are tasked with strolling through the bush, peering up at trees and keeping track of the numbers of koalas they see. This method, however, is slow, expensive and potentially disturbing for the animals.
How does it work?
The new surveying technique involves flying drones equipped with infrared cameras over bushland areas containing koalas. The research team developed an algorithm that identifies the unique heat signature emitted by the fuzzy marsupials. Koalas love to feast on eucalyptus trees and generally hang out beneath the forest canopy making normal aerial surveying difficult. The infrared cameras are able to see through the canopy and conduct surveys by passing up and down over a specific area of the bush in what is referred to as a “lawnmower pattern.” The cover image for this story shows gives an idea what the infrared camera ‘sees’ when it spots a koala beneath the canopy.
To ensure the technique had maximum effectiveness, the researchers flew test flights early in the mornings to ensure that the koala’s body temperature was likely to be the most different from that of the surrounding area.
How successful are humans at spotting koalas when compared to the drone?
When drone surveys of populations were tested against that from specially-trained human spotters, drones came out on top. Whereas humans are able to spot 70 percent of koalas in a given area, drone surveys achieved an 86 percent spot rate. Drones are also much faster: a UAV will take a couple of hours to survey an area that might take a human all day to do.
Koalas enjoy iconic status as a cuddly, chilled out Australia bear. Unfortunately, in some area of the country, factors like climate change and habitat destruction have them facing population declines. Conservations, therefore, need accurate population information to ascertain where best to apply their limited resources to sustain Australia’s koala population.
Koalas face population declines in multiple areas of Australia. Drones will help conservationists monitor their numbers more accurately.
This method was first trialled in 2016 and after finding success over the past few years it is likely to be used in other areas of Australia.
In recent years, drones have been adopted for many roles by conservationist and nature researchers. Drones were, on average, better at counting wildlife than people. That seems to have been the case here too.
The researchers behind this project have indicated that there will continue to be a role for human and dog koala spotters in future because there were some areas that were not practical for a drone to access.
Drones are playing a vital role in preserving a critically endangered flightless parrot in New Zealand.
The kākāpō is a highly charming nocturnal bird and the world’s only flightless parrot. They typically live to be about 90, making them one of the longest living birds in the world. They are known to be very friendly, sometimes climbing onto and preening humans they encounter. Adult male kākāpō weigh between 4.4-8.8 lbs (2-4kgs).
Unfortunately for this lovely bird, there are only 147 of them left on Earth, making them highly susceptible to extinction. 60 million years of geographic isolation helped New Zealand become home to 16 species of indigenous flightless birds, the most famous of which is the Kiwi. These birds evolved in an environment with no land-based predators. The introduction of rats, cats, ferrets and so forth was devastating for New Zealand’s native bird species who had no defence against the introduced pests.
Fortunately, a concerted effort over the past several decades by New Zealand’s Department of Conservation (DOC), has seen the kākāpō avoid extinction and ever so slowly, rebuild its population.
The kakapo is critically endangered with less than 150 left alive in the world.
For the past decade, DOC has been using artificial insemination to increase the chances that kākāpō lay fertile eggs.
The DOC rangers use drones to transport semen from the male birds between different islands. In the past, it used to take several hours for rangers to trek from areas where they extracted ‘the goods’ to the female birds. With a Mavic Air, however, it takes just 10 minutes to transport the sample, making the chances of successful fertilisation much higher. Test flights showed that the semen was not affected during short-term flights and hopefully breeding efforts will continue to help this bird population recover.
When you traditionally imagine farm animals being rounded up, you picture cowboys on horseback wrastling cattle or border collies snapping at the heels of sheep.
It’s becoming increasingly popular, however, for farmers to send drones to help round up animals, particularly on high-country farms.
New Zealand, home to 25 million sheep and more than 10 million cattle, is a country already seeing farmers adopting drones to herd stock. One Kiwi farmer interviewed said he often uses his Phantom 4 Pro to drive the stock along valleys. The noise from the drones scares the sheep or cattle into moving.
The drones are deployed for about 25 minutes at a time, the batteries are replaced and they keep going. Farmers report that the benefit of using drones is the time saving it offers. A farmer can easily see the location of their animals, without having to travel there on horseback or quadbike.
Despite the new abilities provided by drones, as the farmer said to the ODT:
”You still can’t do it without your dogs.”
New Zealand has less than 5 million people and 25 million sheep. Not surprisingly, there are more than a few national sheepdog competitions in the country.
In a sheepdog trial, a dog with the guidance of their owner will corral a group of three sheep and direct them towards a gate. The timer stops once the gate is shut. Some of these competitions are now allowing a new category: drones.
it’s interesting to note that drones are slowing taking over parts of the job that was once exclusively the domain of animals.
When you switch from traditional base-and-rover surveying to drone surveying on site, you are setting yourself and team up to make better, data-driven decisions. The efficiency of drones surveying allows you to shave days or weeks off typical surveying workflows.
And since the drone is doing most of the work, you don’t need to send personnel out to walk a site or access dangerous areas. This alone reduces safety risks and speeds up data gathering.
Further, drones are cheaper and simpler to use than traditional surveying equipment, so you don’t need to spend tens of thousands of pounds on hardware and you don’t need to have special training or education to capture site data. With instruction you can do it yourself or have a experienced drone pilot on site and on tap several days a week. You no longer have to wait for infrequent surveys or pay for something that’s not being used. You can update your data as often as you want to fly the site.
With the right processing software and ground control, you can achieve survey-grade accuracy throughout your site.
As you can imagine, the people who benefit from drone operations make up a long list including:
Site managers
Project managers
Engineers
Site supervisors
Head office personnel
Surveyors
Production managers
Accountants
Foremen
Chief estimators
Superintendents
Equipment operators
Safety officers
Owners and reps
College graduation is just around the corner, which means thousands of young, tech-savvy graduates will soon enter the workforce. As new graduates search for careers, several will be eyeing opportunities that allow them to utilize their technical skills and offer high-growth opportunities.
With the “great crew change” arguably one of the biggest hurdles traditionally facing oil and gas operators, attracting new and young talent has been a major challenge for years. However today, drones are offering a surprising solution to help bridge the gap between seasoned vets edging towards retirement, and incoming green talent.
Solving the great crew change
For trusted oil and gas experts who have worked in the industry for years, adequately training an incoming younger, tech-raised employee can be daunting. However, new technology like drones equipped with aerial telepresence help benefit both new and seasoned workforce alike. With access to instant real-time visibility in the field from anywhere in the world, aerial telepresence allows experienced workers to better train and empower the incoming younger generation, while also promoting the use of some the most innovative tech to improve efficiency and safety.
When new, green talent enters the oil and gas industry, training is the first step to learning and understanding the day-to-day tasks of the job. But unlike traditional methods of training, today, experts are able to use drones to be more efficient during employee on-boarding. Using a drone, experts and new talent are able to simultaneously and in real-time get eyes on nearly every inch of the field, fast. What might have taken days to understand, large and often dangerous areas of terrain, including pipelines, well sites, and tanks, now only takes a few hours with the help of a drone. And with access to stored footage from cloud storage repositories, incoming younger workers are enabled to go back and gather insights from drone footage immediately after training sessions to help improve retention and understanding in the field
Smart technology, smart operations
Today, the smartest oil and gas operators are utilizing drones to help reduce costs, drive operational efficiencies, and improve safety. For incoming workers, that can mean several opportunities to quickly learn and get ahead in the industry.
For example, drones enable experts to show incoming talent the ins-and-outs of crucial tasks like asset inspection. Instead of enduring hours of drives between well site pads, or walking pipelines, drones allow experienced employees and newcomers to navigate complex assets, while still pinpointing critical insights within minutes and from a safe location. With drones saving hours and even days of time on highly-manual and time-consuming jobs, experts and younger hires are freed up to focus on higher-impact areas of fieldwork, including how to maintain asset integrity, mitigate problems, or properly respond to a situation when something goes wrong — all helping to increase incoming workers’ efficiency, and safety while in the field.
Reducing costs
Additionally, are drones helping save organizations significant costs. Instead of deploying trucks, or helicopters to survey and inspect wide ranges of terrain, a drone can be launched within minutes for a fraction of the cost. And with added aerial visibility and intelligence, in the event of an alarm sound or emergency, a drone can quickly get eyes on a situation, and help operators and those who are less experienced better determine the right resources to manage a situation, instead of deploying tools that ultimately wouldn’t be needed.
Increasing safety for all
For less experienced workers, understanding the safety risks of the field is pertinent, and knowing how to respond to an emergency can help save resources and even lives. Luckily, smart operators are using drones for emergency response and helping to enhance situational awareness. With the ability to give incoming talent a first-hand and up-close look at an emergency, new workers are able to see exactly what’s needed to mitigate and fix an issue. For example, before operators make a decision to respond to an emergency like a fire, spill, or gas leak, operators can quickly deploy a drone to get aerial pictures of a site and make accurate decisions. And with real-time aerial visibility giving them a holistic view of an emergency, operators, and first-responders are able to turn to drones for enhanced situational awareness and pinpoint areas of danger instead of entering one blindly.
All team members can deploy a drone
For oil and gas operators who might be considering starting a program, today’s technology makes it easier than ever to implement drones into daily operations. With functionality and features like geo-fencing and obstacle avoidance technology, nearly anyone — seasoned vet or incoming hire — can easily and safely deploy a drone to get a quick, detailed, and zoomed-in view of assets that may be hard to view, without worrying about crashing or destroying an asset. Additionally, by integrating enhanced technology like FLIR infrared and thermal cameras, seasoned operators can help less experienced workers better identify irregularities in the field, including hot spots that may cause dangerous situations like fires.
Today, drones are one of the keys to attracting and retaining top incoming talent. With the ability to enable trusted experts real-time visibility in the field from anywhere in the world to better train and empower the younger workforce, drones are providing new ways to help improve operational efficiencies, reduce costs, and increase safety. Offering opportunities for incoming talent to use innovative, new technology and help lead a new era of digitization and insights, while also getting a full, holistic understanding of oil and gas operations from seasoned vets, drone technology is not only a smart way to bring in new talent, but also helps bridge the gap between operators with legacy knowledge and driving green and ready-to-learn talent.
