Engineering news
A joint venture between major asset management consultancy, Amey, and drone specialist firm VTOL Technologies, will push forward development of a hybrid wing, long range drone for a more cost-effective and safer way to assess vital infrastructure such as bridges and railways.
Richard Butterfield, AmeyVTOL’s service development director, told PE: “As asset managers, our overarching responsibility is to automate as much of asset data collection as possible so that we’re protecting our people from potential hazards, for example working at height, or next to live railways or busy highways. We believe that our partnership will be the first to market with a genuine solution for this as early as 2018.”
VTOL Technologies autonomous drone, ‘The Flying Wing’, is a long-range, beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS), autonomous drone. The patented hybrid wing design has both rotors, for vertical lift off and the ability to hover, as well as a patented airframe to be able to withstand hazardous weather conditions. It is also able to fly more than 100km at speeds of more than 60kph.
The Flying Wing can carry ground penetrating radar, high definition video and still, infrared, thermal and light detection and ranging sensors, allowing the drone to precisely map the same route multiple times. It can also send back real-time data in order to improve asset managements decision making abilities.
AmeyVTOL has carried out asset inspections of a number of major UK international and regional airports, and is currently carrying out an examination of the Britannia Bridge at Anglesey for National Rail. However, to be able to inspect hundreds of miles of railway line the technology must further develop its BVLOS capabilities.
Butterfield said: “Today drones cannot truly go beyond the line of sight but we think VTOL’s Flying Wing will be one of the first to do so. However, in order to achieve this significant technology integration must be carried out, focusing on the miniaturisation of avionics technologies.”
AmeyVTOL aim to integrate BVLOS technology by 2018.