Wondering if you should invest in drone mapping to support your everyday workflows? Professionals in earthworks, mining, waste management, and other industries are taking flight with drones to survey challenging and often dangerous worksites, allowing for more frequent surveys that can be used to track progress, measure stockpiles, and generally make better decisions.
More than a drone is required to create photorealistic surveys that mirror conditions on the ground at your job site—you need a drone data processing solution like Propeller Aero to transform in-flight data into accurate 3-D representations of topographic surfaces. Here’s why you should invest in drone mapping.
Drone mapping is affordable
Drone technology is becoming more affordable than ever. No longer is an investment in the tens of thousands of dollars required—all it takes is a quality drone, ground control points, and Propeller’s processing platform to obtain accurate 3-D renderings of your job site. You don’t even need to spend significant time and money training an entire survey team. As long as you or a member of your team hold a current Part 107 license, you’re able to fly your site with a drone to support your everyday workflows.
Drone mapping is relatively easy
Drones are much more than remote-controlled planes—they’re heavy-duty pieces of equipment that accurately collect data every time they fly. While you do need someone on your team to hold a Part 107 license to fly your site commercially, it’s easy and affordable to earn this certification.
Why is drone mapping so reliable? Because drones are so easy to use. You can control the drone by drawing a path on your controller screen with a finger. With a single tap on the screen, you can direct your drone “home” to its base station. It’s even easy to upload flight paths in advance, so all you have to do is monitor the drone’s progress in flight, allowing the drone and ground control points to do all the work for you.
Drone mapping is accurate
Advances in technology have made drone survey data incredibly reliable and accurate, especially when you use Propeller’s processing solution to aggregate your data. By flying an RTK-enabled drone and using ground control points to verify the geospatial locations of every image collected in flight, the Propeller platform does the heavy lifting, turning the data into 3-D renderings with measurements that are accurate down to a fraction of an inch.
No matter what industry you work in—from land surveying to construction, mining to waste management—drone surveys deliver the accuracy you need to make better decisions, improve worksite safety, and support sustainability.
Benefits of drone mapping
Now that you know how affordable, reliable, and accurate drone survey programs can be, learn some of the practical benefits engineers, project managers, and even workers on the ground can enjoy on a day-to-day basis:
Improved safety: Construction sites, mines, landfills, and other job sites are inherently hazardous. By using drones to survey your site rather than boots on the ground, you no longer require workers to walk over potentially dangerous areas.
Enhanced communication: It’s always been challenging for teams on the ground to interface with what’s going on back at the office. With drone survey data and the 3-D maps they generate, everyone involved in a project has a single source of truth they can refer back to. Propeller’s centralized platform can be accessed by an unlimited number of users, offering cloud-based communication that prevents disputes and keeps projects on track.
Reduced costs: Surveying a site the traditional way—traversing it on foot—is both time-consuming and costly. Now, drones can survey even large sites in as little as 10 minutes. After the flight, all you have to do is input your data into Propeller’s processing platform. In a matter of hours, you have access to 3-D maps and renderings that are stored in the cloud. Overall, you save time and money, enabling more frequent surveys you can use to make better decisions throughout a project’s entire lifecycle.
Whether you work in the civil construction, earthworks, mining, or waste management industries, your day-to-day job involves plenty of complexities. Starting a drone survey program improves your everyday workflows in a number of ways, from improving safety on the job site to supporting efficiency and better decision-making.
The real question here isn’t why you should invest in drone mapping for your workflows, but why haven’t you yet? If you’re ready to integrate drones into your everyday operations, you not only need to invest in the right drone, but you also need to use the best drone data processing software to make your job easier—Propeller Aero’s cloud-based solution is the answer.
