There was no shortage of examples of how drones are already making tower sites more efficient at the NATE UAS 2023 EXPO hosted by Valmont last week in Valley, NE. But, speakers noted, this is just the beginning. “Data Driven Decisions – A conversation with Industry Leadership” was a wide-ranging conversation about the tower industry’s current experience and its expectations for drones in the future.
Sam McGuire, CEO, FieldSync, moderated a panel, which included John Bozzetto, VP of Structural Engineering, Vertical Bridge; Mike Clementi, VP at Valmont; and Jason Schnellbacher, Director of Technology Ecosystem Development at T-Mobile.
When doing modifications to a foundation, Bozzetto said using a drone to provide a bird’s eye view of the compound is very helpful to quickly obtain dimensions. He also mentioned that sending a drone to map existing available RAD centers allows Vertical Bridge to quickly find out whether it can fit another tenant on a site at a moment’s notice.
“If we don’t think we have a space for another antenna on a tower, via drone flight, we can get that kind of detail where we can see if we can fit someone in,” Bozzetto said.
Two-dimensional images transmitted from drones have assisted Vertical Bridge in damage assessment after hurricanes and tornadoes. “In these cases, we didn’t necessarily need the kind of granularity you get with a digital twin. In most cases, you know, we can assess damage, whether it’s a bent member or a canister issue. So it’s been very useful for those cases,” Bozzetto said.
Schnellbacher said he sees promise in the future for what is known as a “drone in a box” solution, where the drone would live at a remote tower and take off autonomously to do inspections either on demand or on a regular schedule.
“Nobody likes to drive four to six hours away to go and inspect the tower,” Schnellbacher said. “I think our company would be interested in things like that. Mostly, the inspections that we see today are done with manual flights.”
Bozzetto also sees potential for a rural application for drone-in-a-box. Vertical Bridge will test the drone-in-a-box and see how it compares economically with sending out a technician every three to five years to do manual TIA drone inspection. McGuire agreed that the industry will be looking for a “sweet spot” for drone-in-a-box use.
Schnellbacher was confident about T-Mobile’s ability to backhaul data from drones, saying the carrier is now installing 10 Gbps speeds at its 5G tower sites. Additionally, he has been researching using a new technology called “Dual Sim Dual Active” where the drone can connect on different networks or on different frequencies on the same network, which will increase reliability. “I think the FAA is going to really appreciate those higher levels of reliability that are possible with multiple connections,” he said.
Currently, the use of drones helps Vertical Bridge familiarize itself with new towers that it has acquired. “If we do a drone flight, we can tell if that tower has been modified structurally,” Bozzetto said.
In the future, Bozzetto said Vertical Bridge’s engineering team would like to see accuracy down to a 16th of an inch, concerning angles and thicknesses of pipes and monopoles. “With more accurate structural data, I think we’re going to be able to do a full mapping of a tower, maybe without having a climber go up there,” he said.
Clementi envisions a future where all drones will have WiFi, 5G or 6G, and sites will be flown autonomously. If there’s an issue on a site, the drone will use barcoding or RFID to identify the issue and send back an alert of what component needs to be replaced. “I can even see the drones generating an automatic bid to approved suppliers,” he said.
McGuire said even though drones are beginning to scale, he is not sure what the impact will be on the tower technician workforce. “I think there’s going to be a lot of truck rolls that we’re able to mitigate over the years as more folks across the supply chain can circle up around the data, make decisions faster, and have a lot of the on-tower work be tactile that maybe a drone is not capable of yet,” he said.
By J. Sharpe Smith, Inside Towers Technology Editor
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