The Skygauge Inspection Drone is constantly evolving and iterating to address customer expectations. One of the key features our team has developed is angled flight, enabling the drone to conduct inspections on slopes, and enabling it to fly at any angle or orientation.

Learn what angled flight capabilities mean for Drone Service Providers, Asset Owners, and Inspection Companies, and how you can implement it on an existing Skygauge drone today.

What is angled flight?

Previously the Skygauge Inspection drone was only capable of horizontal and vertical contact. Vertical tank walls, the tops and bottoms of pipes, and the roofs of tanks were all viable targets for inspection, but only in ideal conditions.

Many asset roofs are not perfectly flat. Pipes and cylindrical tanks need inspection all over their circumference, not just the top and bottom.

With angled flight, the Skygauge is able to inspect any point on both regular and irregularly-shaped industrial assets.

Drone Service Providers

As a drone service provider, you are in direct competition with traditional methods of inspection. You leverage the superior cost-effectiveness of drone technology to complete jobs in a fraction of the time, at a fraction of the cost.

The effectiveness of drones in certain industries speaks for itself. Drone Inspection services have largely replaced conventional inspectors for aerial photography, and visual inspections in the oil and gas industry, for example. Roof inspections in the real estate industry are another common area where asset managers recognize the value of professional drones.

Ultrasonic testing is an emerging space for drone technology, however, drones in this space are still limited. Crawlers for example can only navigate vertical surfaces, and most drones are not nimble enough to navigate irregular and confined spaces.

Thanks to angled flight, the Skygauge Inspection Drone now has the maneuverability and stability to perform inspections at any angle, on a broad range of industrial assets.

As a drone service provider, this means you can be confident that the Skygauge will be able to complete a job regardless of the shape of the target asset, or the layout of the target site. It means that you can take on more jobs with confidence, making your business more competitive.

Inspection Services

As an industrial inspection service provider, you are familiar with tried-and-true inspection methods. While drones can do some inspection jobs faster, safer, and easier, these reliable traditional methods work every time regardless of the shape and size of the target asset.

In order for the Skygauge to be an effective substitute, it would need to be able to perform the test in any scenario that a human can. This includes irregularly sloped assets and unusually shaped areas. With angled flight, we are able to provide a competitive product that can work for you in all cases, regardless of asset geometry.

Asset Owners

Having a Skygauge in-house is an investment in safety, and cost-effective inspections at your site. However, if the Skygauge cannot fully replace a conventional inspection team, you still end up paying for conventional inspections some of the time.

Thanks to angled flight, the Skygauge is applicable in all situations, and having our drone in the sky is equivalent to having a human inspector on ropes or a crane - just much safer and at a fraction of the cost.

This means that, as an asset integrity manager, you can be confident in the quality and all-around usefulness of your Skygauge purchase.

Rollout of Angled Capability

As Skygauge rolls out this new feature, we will contact existing owners to pilot this new dimension of the Skygauge Drone. New Skygauge owners will also receive this feature as it becomes available. The process will involve two steps, a software update and pilot training.

The angled flight mode is a new capability unlocked using existing Skygauge hardware. This means conversion to an angled-capable drone only requires a software update - you do not need to replace your existing drone with a new one.

Pilot training will take 3-5 days, and can take place at your site or onsite at the Skygauge facility in Hamilton, ON, at your convenience.

Thanks to our intuitive control system, UAV pilots without any Skygauge experience should have no issue mastering our platform - including angled flight modes - within that time period.

Summary

The Skygauge Inspection Drone is now a holistic inspection solution, capable of operating in any area where a human inspector can. This is due in no small part to its angled flight mode, which enables the drone to access sloped surfaces, and previously unreachable areas.

As a drone services provider, this means you can confidently take on ultrasonic inspection jobs regardless of the geometry of the target asset. The same is true for inspection service providers, who can be confident that the drone is a cost-effective and time-effective option for any sort of UT inspection job. As an asset owner, it means you can inspect any asset on your industrial site, regardless of asset shape or location.

Contact us today to learn more about angled flight, and what the Skygauge can do for your business: