This means inspectors have to enter the bins by rappelling from the top and standing on temporary scaffolding.
Straight away, the big issue comes for the larger companies that need to do many of these inspections every year, resulting in lost time and lost profits.
Recently, one of these large companies began investigating new ways to inspect the large bins, with the Flyability Elios 2 being one of the options on the market.
If the test worked, the company would realize significant savings by reducing the downtime needed for inspections and removing the need for building scaffolding to support an inspector. It would also improve safety for inspectors by removing the need for them to physically enter grain bins in order to collect visual data.
To put the Elios 2 to the test, the company tested it out on two of its large grain bins. Here are the tasks that the drone was used for during the test:
The test flights were a success, with the Elios 2 helping the inspectors identify several defects and areas where work was required.
Despite a strong wind on the day of the test flights, which created challenging conditions for flying, the Elios 2 was able to collect all of the visual data required for a full visual inspection. The quality of the data was quite high, and sufficient to completely replace the need for an inspector to physically enter the grain bin for the additional collection of visual data.
For these grain bin inspections, the POIs [Points of Interest] taken in flight have almost more value than the video footage since they provide a high-quality overview of the condition of various parts of the bin. - Project Supervisor for the grain bin inspection tests.
Here are the steps taken to inspect one of the grain bins:
Source: Flyability