While the project engagement was for a traditional powerline survey, Orion’s Drone & Digital and Survey Business units recognised an opportunity for even better results. So, utilising our RTK drone technology and advanced modelling software, we conducted the survey from the sky.
Careful planning was crucial, and we faced many challenges, including:
- The project site was situated two hours away from our base, making accurate weather assessment vital and fluctuation detrimental.
- The powerline alignment traversed through heavily vegetated bushland with trees reaching up to 23m tall, making it difficult for the drone to capture image overlap.
- Image overlap was essential for reconstructing the powerline easement accurately.
Despite these challenges, we achieved success. With our carefully planned flight mission and strategic ground control positioned along the corridor, we accurately captured the powerline easement’s site and features.
In the next step, our software’s ‘machine vision’ assessed the resultant reality model, explicitly searching for powerlines to extract them from the model in 3D space. Impressively, apart from hitting ‘run’ on the application, this was done without human intervention. This is confirmed through reality model accuracy reports generated from the software and quality assurance checks by our modellers and surveyors following the automated extraction process.
To finalise, analysis of the resultant data by both the drone and Survey Lead verified that accuracy of the capture fell within the client’s specified tolerances. We are pleased to report we achieved the required outcome, plus more.
