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"There are no dumb questions" - Oogway Regular drones are awesome to make short missions (you need to check one electrical pylone or a small bridge - take a dr
by ThomasLaporte 3y ago
"There are no dumb questions" - Oogway
Regular drones are awesome to make short missions (you need to check one electrical pylone or a small bridge - take a drone). But on bigger scale they don't have enough range to do this kind of operations.
Also, they don't have enough payload. You can only fly with one camera, when the utilities need HQ camera, infrared, LiDAR etc. That's why they need to keep using helicopters.
- TylerE 3y agoWhy not more drones then? Sorta like how railroads figured out it was much simpler operationally to have fewer types of locomotives, and use multiples on larger trains, rather than create dinosaurs like the DDA40x (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMD_DDA40X https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMD_DDA40X) that were ONLY useful in narrow circumstances.
- ThomasLaporte 3y agoThere are approx 53 million miles of energy infrastructure on the planet (a new report was published today). Regular drones can't be used to inspect that much (too many drones required, too many pilots, too much aerial and ground risk - when regular drone fall they are lethal).
- TylerE 3y agoDrones are a commodity product where economies of scale have brought prices way down while capabilities have gone way up. Airships won’t scale like that. You don’t have the benefit of tons of media companies buying airships to use as camera platforms.
- ThomasLaporte 3y agoClient should pay at least 3x times as much to get the same service from drones. Again, it's not scalable using drones that's why our clients keep using helicopter on 90% of their missions.
- TylerE 3y agoAnd in ten years when drones are 5 times as capable and cost half?