Colorado construction sites abuzz with drones, as industry embraces unmanned aircraft
What's that buzzing? Why, unmanned aerial vehicles, of course. From Summit County to Denver's Central Business District, drones - frequently called unmanned aerial vehicles or UAVs by industry professionals - are being put to work on construction sites across Colorado these days, part of a national trend as business owners get better acquainted with the devices' capabilities, the savings they can generate and the federal guidelines regulating them.
From article, (As of Dec. 15, 107,594 drones had been registered in the U.S. with the FAA for commercial use under Part 107, agency officials say. Prior to establishment of Part 107, commercial drone operations were authorized on a case-by-case basis. Now licensed operators can skip calling the feds so long as they adhere to the rules.
In 2016, Lopez used a drone to do secondary inspections of wall and structural steel connections on the lower floors of 1144 Fifteenth, a 40-story office tower in downtown Denver. Lopez is hoping to run a thermal analysis of the building, but with its height and the amount of signal interference possible in a dense, busy urban setting, he is not convinced of the operation would be safe just yet.
“We are working with drone manufacturers to get a suitable drone,” Lopez said of the task. “We have to feel comfortable that we have an air frame that can fly that project.”
Emison, who recently left a post as communications director of nonprofit drone advocacy group UAS Colorado, said he knows of more than 40 companies doing business in the drone industry that have opened in Colorado over the last two years. That includes Multicopter Warehouse, an authorized dealer for DJI, one of the leading drones sellers in the world.
Construction has been fast to embrace drone use because of its cost effectiveness, Emison said, but many other industries are following suit. Amazon’s plans to eventually air-drop packages on customers’ front lawns via drone are well-documented. Drone-shot video footage is already a common fixture in marketing materials and media coverage. Xcel Energy has an internal drone program with a focus on use inspecting transmission lines and other infrastructure. The Colorado General Assembly passed a bill last year ordering a study of how unmanned aerial systems could be put to work in firefighting, search and rescue, accident reconstruction and other public safety capacities.
“I think the exciting part about the industry is we’re poised to touch everything,” Emison said.
“So far, I think the industry is so new, there is nothing typical yet,” Hatt said. “It seems like every client we’ve talked to wants something with a different twist or turn to it.”
Potential barriers remain to the proliferation of commercial drone use. University of Colorado Professor Eric Frew, who has been studying unnamed vehicles for 20 years, said that if regulators fail to keep up with the capabilities of unmanned aerial vehicles it could impede expansion and usefulness. Frew, who is now leading the autonomous systems interdisciplinary research theme at CU, said that as more advanced systems emerge — such as on-board obstacle avoidance — it will be key for researchers to provide hard data to assess the capabilities of those systems and for regulators to use that a data to create clear frameworks and benchmarks for safe operations.)
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