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Vertical Mapping/Inspection

BigAl07

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Has anyone ever done any Vertical structure work? I’ve got a client wanting me to shoot the “wall” of the Courthouse to inspect for damage/material failure allowing water in. I would love to find a simple way to shoot the wall autonomously (there aren't any obstacles in the area at all) for two passes. One to take preset pictures like I would when mapping and one as a continuous video file.

Anyone doing this currently?
 
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No real experience doing it. Should be easily programed in Litchi though. For automated flight, just remember that positioning could easily be several meters off from the plan. An RTK equipped drone would drop that to a meter or 2 at most in single mode. If you can see what you need to with a decent buffer then you should be fine. Hand flying it with the old "course lock" (remember that ?) should be really easy as well. Video, and then timed image capture mode.
 
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When doing progressions at UC Merced I had to do verticals and I couldn't figure out any way to do it autonomously. The real pain was indexing the photos so the client knew what section of the wall they were looking at.
The finally decided the progression photos were useless.
 
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Thanks guys. I'm going to meet the Proj Manager here shortly and get a better feel for the scope of the project. Odds are I'll just hand fly it and go from there. I'll know more shortly... it's so close I can ALMOST fly it from my office here LOL
 
After going and viewing the problem area and the data needed it's most definitely going to be All Manual!! I'll be flying to capture the intersections between various materials looking for any sign of water infiltration into the building. It's actually 2 different buildings and both are "Sensitive Infrastructure" (They have jails etc). This is going to be interesting LOL!
 
@BigAl07 How did this turn out? I have been asked about doing a vertical facade inspection for a new build of a multistory building. Did you do photos or video? Did you stitch them or just provide the individual photos?

@R.Perry Have you found a good way to do verticals?

Thanks guys.
 
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@BigAl07 How did this turn out? I have been asked about doing a vertical facade inspection for a new build of a multistory building. Did you do photos or video? Did you stitch them or just provide the individual photos?

@R.Perry Have you found a good way to do verticals?

Thanks guys.


It was much more "intense" than I had planned due to flying in between buildings and not having solid/healthy GPS signal a good portion of the flights. I flew manually and it was "exciting" because of the winds going between the buildings and lack of solid GPS signal. It was 7 batteries of "Pucker Factor 10" but turned out great. This is going to sound arrogant but needs to be said... If I had not been a competent UAS operator being able to fly steady without "training wheels" this could have been a disaster. I had to maintain a steady and controlled flight just 2 feet from the face of the building going in a consistent speed and direction in a grid UP, Down and Across the building facade.

The final product was videos and still images. I did no stitching as they asked for individual pictures from the get-go.

From our photos/video they were able to locate all of the sources of Water Intrusion and create the game-plan to correct the problems.
 
When doing progressions at UC Merced I had to do verticals and I couldn't figure out any way to do it autonomously. The real pain was indexing the photos so the client knew what section of the wall they were looking at.
The finally decided the progression photos were useless.


The "indexing of the images" was a hurdle for sure. We snapped (from a distance) a full image of the wall and then imposed our flight pattern and index for each image over the Full Image. We did this for each wall section (three of them) and labeled each image according to wall ID.
 
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It was much more "intense" than I had planned due to flying in between buildings and not having solid/healthy GPS signal a good portion of the flights. I flew manually and it was "exciting" because of the winds going between the buildings and lack of solid GPS signal. It was 7 batteries of "Pucker Factor 10" but turned out great. This is going to sound arrogant but needs to be said... If I had not been a competent UAS operator being able to fly steady without "training wheels" this could have been a disaster. I had to maintain a steady and controlled flight just 2 feet from the face of the building going in a consistent speed and direction in a grid UP, Down and Across the building facade.

The final product was videos and still images. I did no stitching as they asked for individual pictures from the get-go.

From our photos/video they were able to locate all of the sources of Water Intrusion and create the game-plan to correct the problems.
Two feet! Wow sounds intense. I was thinking that I'd be flying further out (10-30 feet), but this will depend on the client needs. Must have been a lot of photos.
 
Two feet! Wow sounds intense. I was thinking that I'd be flying further out (10-30 feet), but this will depend on the client needs. Must have been a lot of photos.
It was several photos and they have to be close in order to look for water entering/exiting the facade.

Did you use a timed shutter or manual capture to get the pics? Just curious what worked best in case I get into a project like that. Thanks.

Nothing automated. I flew and triggered the photos for each element of the structure. I took my time and framed each image as perfectly as I could to maintain a constant POV for each image.
 
@BigAl07 Have you tried Dronelink using facade? I use it before and I believe archive what you are looking for.
 
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Hi All,

We recently undertook a facade inspection and put together an end-to-end guide:

Hope it forms an interesting read!
 
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Hi All,

We recently undertook a facade inspection and put together an end-to-end guide:

Hope it forms an interesting read!
Thanks. Have anyone used Hammer Mission for Flying Vertical Facade. Would like to get some more information before attempting to use the software . TIA
 
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