Nowadays pipelines are unprotected against different threats over hundreds of kilometers. In several countries oil and gas industry is still up to 95% of the national income! Sabotage or technical damages mean significant financial losses and also environmental problems, e.g. contamination of the ground during a leakage.
Swiss-based Aratos Homeland Security has developed a solution that offers a combination of systems to protect pipelines in a holistic way. Systems such as satellites, fiber optical components, specialized cameras, UAS, and UGV’s to immediately act on threats like theft and sabotage, before happen. They also present the damages that occur on pipelines like material failure, mechanical damages in real time.
With Aratos’ UAS solution any POI (Point of Interest) can be reached rapidly after the alert is triggered , day & night, gather all the important information, and distribute it in real-time to the decision makers in order to act upon the threats.
Another important operation on offer is the UAV-Modus to capturing escaping people or vehicles – send the coordination of their location at any time to police or other authorities, and in case of technical damages directly to the oil companies.
To download a complete brochure, click here.
Source: Web Site
Yes, the inclusion of UAV/UAS is likely inevitable but I believe they will be highly purposed in mission for some time. In the US, non-commercial UAS can be flown in line of sight up to 100-150m AGL. This places a severe autonomous or controlled patrols on anything other than 1000 to 2000 meters out? This is still quite an area for a detailed patrol IMHO. Our personal observation is for UAS that are under 15Kg they are great for a rapid scan up a tower or along a short reach of corridor for things like bridge or crossing inspections, for foundation inspection on hard to get to placements, and for some limited up-close inspection. But if there is “any” wind, gusty or otherwise, well its hard to see a $30,000 platform doing a swan dive. The UAS is getting smarter and smarter but the flight training for the up-close inspection can be thrilling to witness. IMHO the real innovation in the corridor patrol will be via improved sensors and camera operations that still require eye-hand coordination’s. Helicopter and light plane will for a long time maintain their operational advantages and carry increasingly sophisticated cameras and sensors as well as automatons for cursor-on-target or on center-line auto-tracking?
the limitation for operating UAVs will be soon lifted, … the FAA is working on the new regulation … of course, the UAV will need to be certified, which means all the “me-too hobbyist drone designers” who pretend to be professionals are going to be cut off, but that is ok .. fact of life.
UAVs who are autonomous robots and fully integrated in the general aviation system are a thing of the future, there is no doubt and as usual, the significant initial fragmentation of the market will disappear as soon as the new regulation will create a market where real companies can actually make real money …