Design of an Autonomous Cooperative Drone Swarm for Inspections of Safety Critical Infrastructure

Abstract

Inspection of critical infrastructure with drones is experiencing an increasing uptake in the industry driven by a demand for reduced cost, time, and risk for inspectors. Early deployments of drone inspection services involve manual drone operations with a pilot and do not obtain the technological benefits concerning autonomy, coordination, and cooperation. In this paper, we study the design needed to handle the complexity of an Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) to support autonomous inspection of safety-critical infrastructure. We apply a constructive research approach to link innovation needs with concepts, designs, and validations that include simulation and demonstration of key design parts. Our design approach addresses the complexity of the UAS and provides a selection of technology components for drone and ground control hardware and software including algorithms for autonomous operation and interaction with cloud services. The paper presents a drone perception system with accelerated onboard computing, communication technologies of the UAS, as well as algorithms for swarm membership, formation flying, object detection, and fault detection with artificial intelligence. We find that the design of a cooperative drone swarm and its integration into a custom-built UAS for infrastructure inspection is highly feasible given the current state of the art in electronic components, software, and communication technology.

Risks of Drone Use in Light of Literature Studies

“…Due to the efficiency of performing tasks with reduced turnaround time, the ability to add to places that are difficult for humans to access, and the lack of contraindications to work in harsh conditions, drones are increasingly being used as a tool for performing various types of inspections [ 126 ]. Examples of such publications relating directly to inspection processes based on drone-based monitoring are as follows: Conducting inspections of unburied land pipelines [ 127 ]; Identifying corrosion in industrial structures such as telecommunications towers [ 128 ] and wind farms [ 129 , 130 ]; Conducting inspections of safety-critical infrastructure [ 131 ]; Tracking construction progress [ 132 , 133 ]; Inspecting terrain for unexploded ordnance [ 134 ] and landmines [ 135 ]; Inspecting bridge and road infrastructure [ 38 , 136 ]. …”

“…Conducting inspections of safety-critical infrastructure [131]; • Tracking construction progress [132,133];…”

Deployment of a UAV swarm-based LiFi network in the obstacle-ridden environment: algorithms of finding the path for UAV placement

“…First, the use of UAVs must not violate the safety and legal requirements of the country where the facility is located. For example, the author of [3] provides an overview of recent applications of UAVs for critical infrastructure inspection. The following advantages of using UAVs for critical infrastructure are highlighted:…”

On the Scheduling of Spatio-Temporal Charging Windows for Autonomous Drone Fleets

“…In recent years, the reduction of hardware cost and increase in computation power has made small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones, more suitable for new application areas. When equipped with additional sensors, they have immense potential to execute tasks that are currently being done by humans, such as ''last mile'' parcel delivery [1], search and rescue operations [2], and safety-critical infrastructure inspection [3]- [6]. The presence of lightweight and powerful onboard computers allows drones to autonomously make decisions, removing the reliance on a human operator.…”