The Use of Drones on Construction Sites

Due to the rotational movement of the props or the displacement of the aircraft, an airflow passes over the wings or the propellers. This causes a pressure increase below the profile & a pressure decrease above the profile of the wing or propeller.

1. DRONES ON CONSTRUCTION SITES

Although we do not immediately solve a pressing problem with drones on construction sites, they certainly offer added value in certain situations. However, we must continue to recognize that drones are not a total solution for an existing problem. Everything will always have to be weighed up project by project in what the best choice is, depending on several parameters such as costs, speed, safety, accuracy, legislation & weather conditions. This will become more & more clear in the following chapters.

In the next chapter we will briefly outline this situation without drones, & which situations are avoided if they are used anyway.

We then take a closer look at the geometric technology that drones use to overcome these inconveniences.

1.1.Troubleshooting

In the current time we still see many construction sites where the added value of drones is not known or is ignored. It therefore requires some adaptability, & as long as it goes the old way, change is always difficult to put forward.

Drones have their added value in 2 important aspects. They offer enormous time savings, especially for larger measurements, & they have a very positive influence on safety. Unfortunately, the impact of this is more difficult to control & only the accidents with drones will first come to light.

In general, we can say that a drone can measure a field in half an hour, which would normally take a surveyor a full day. This quickly has a positive effect on large terrain measurements.

Then there are the enormous safety benefits. For example, surveyors & site supervisors, as well as workers, run a high risk of construction sites during their work. We are thinking here, for example, of numerous work accidents, which often occur at height, or with large infrastructure works involving machines such as cranes & trucks, often with fatal consequences. Drones are therefore able to replace many of these human actions in a simple way. & of course a broken drone means nothing compared to a human life.

Unfortunately, today it still happens too often that employees die on construction sites during the work. For example, in 2019 2 surveyors were hit by a train along the railways. Depending on the requirements, it would be perfectly possible to avoid these dangerous situations.

However, it requires knowledge & dedication from companies to implement this. The time & cost that is lost to this often means that this implementation does not happen by itself. We therefore hope that this bachelor’s thesis will shed some light on the situation in order to hopefully have a favourable effect on it.

The drones offer the advantage that the construction site no longer has to be physically entered, they are affordable, deliver fast results & make it all visually very accessible.

The possibilities with drones on construction sites are therefore almost endless.

We can use them for drawing up 3d models, site inspections, site descriptions of the activities, volume determinations, 2d orthophotos on which we can measure & measuring as-built after the work has been completed.

Most of the aforementioned possibilities are based on the technology of photogrammetry. Photogrammetry is certainly nothing new, in fact it has been around for a very long time. However, in recent years we have seen it more & more in combination with drones. This is mainly due to the higher computing power we have with computers today, & the increasingly sharp photographic capabilities of the cameras that are used.

But what exactly is photogrammetry, how does it work & what are the practicalities involved?

1.2.Photogrammetry

Photogrammetry is a method of determining shape & location of objects & areas through measurements in photographs. In other words, collecting information from photos with the emphasis on the dimensions.

It is a passive form of remote sensing in which a sensor is used to obtain information about an object, environment or area from a distance.

So we use photos from the air to obtain information such as 3d models.

We can apply photogrammetry from drones, as well as from airplanes, satellites, mobile phones & the like. The drone is only a recording platform for obtaining the photos from the air.

Now, before we can delve into the process of obtaining a photogrammetric model, we first need to explain some basic concepts that apply to photogrammetry.

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