DRONES CONFINED SPACES NON – MAN ENTRY WALL THICKNESS INSPECTIONS The metal walls of drums, towers and silos become thinner due to e.g. corrosion. Inspections on the inside show the residual wall thickness. Many of these places are only accessible with scaffolding. Furthermore, people are no longer allowed to enter these confined spaces within a few years. The Smart Tooling project looked for a way to measure non-man entry wall thickness using a drone. SMART TOOLING O B J E C T I V E DRONE FOR INDOOR INSPECTION EXTERNALLY CONTROLLED DRONE IN CONFINED SPACE CERTIFIED INSPECTION METHODS CERTIFIED ULTRASONIC WALL THICKNESS MEASUREMENTS CERTIFIED DRONE PILOT 11 There were three main questions for inspection company Terra Inspectioneering (until 2019 RoNik Inspectioneering) and drone developer Del- Dynamics: How do you control a drone from the outside to a particular location in a dark, polluted room without a GPS? How do you get the drone to perform a correct wall thickness measurement? How do you communicate this data to the inspector? All kinds of communication technologies were tested. Like a mini Ultra Wide Band system in cooperation with Pozyx. This resulted in malfunctions due to the shape and metal of the tank. Communication with radio waves was also investigated, but this method proved to be incapable of transmitting information in a robust manner. SOLUTION WITH REEL This meant the idea of wireless communication was dropped at this stage. Del Dynamics then developed a reel with an ultrathin cable. "Like a spider, it leaves the wire behind," explains Arnout de Jong (CEO at Del Dynamics). "Within the project this was
14 Online Touch Home