ydqa ep17

David Young: [00:00:00] Welcome to your drone. Questions answered. I am David Young, founder of Drone Launch Academy, filling in for John. And today we are answering the question, how are drones being used for cell tower inspections and how to do a cell tower inspection with the drone?

So today's guest to answer that is Sam Aguire from Field Sync. please welcome Sam. Sam, why don't you gimme your two second spiel on your background experience with drones and cell towers. I know you're, uh, super qualified to answer this question, but let everybody know, uh, your

Sam McGuire: background.

Sure, yeah. So, back in 2016, After a gap year, my brother and I got into cell towers and doing inspections for American Tower Corp as kind of just a way to refill our bank accounts after an and, uh, we both burned out on the road. I wanted to get back into technology. He wanted to get back into the energy sector and we both kind of fell into the drone side of things.

And then, over the last few years I've worked with or partnered with everybody in the space that's doing anything with drones as it relates to towers. And we just kind of [00:01:00] found that, if you look at the way the market's evolving, getting. This technology into the hands of traditional technicians and starting to meld the traditional workforce with this new tool is probably the biggest opportunity for the space.

So, we've been working with end customers from across the supply chain to figure out what is that use case, and then how do you go out and tailor the workflows to get that data, to get it across the, the finish line.

David Young: Yeah. Awesome. So you've been doing cell towers and drones for a long time. I mean, basically since Jones became more popular, you know, back in the Yeah, I

Sam McGuire: got, you know, I didn't know much about 'em when we were climbing, but then as soon as we both decided to, to get back off the road for a little while, I was coming in right as the, the initial upswing was taking place.

So, like Nate, the, uh, organization we just did the expo with. well tell everybody

David Young: what Nate is. So they know. Yeah. So Na

Sam McGuire: Nate is, uh, the infrastructure, communications Infrastructure Contractors Association. So it's pretty much a, it's a lobbying organization and a representation, for everybody [00:02:00] in that kinda sector.

on the hill, in Washington. They do a lot with education across the industry, big advocates of safety and, we've worked with them really closely since the. year I got into the business and that committee that we had for, for the UAS ops was like eight people around, a table at the, you were on 18th?

Yeah, that's the first year I had joined it. now we're, we have over 45 people on the roster. It's every major telecom, carrier. It's every major tower co. It's all the engineering firms and digital twin companies. So it's been fun to watch the whole space evolve just a few years.

David Young: Yeah. That's awesome.

So you're, you're real deep into, into this industry and how everything works. so for our question, how are drones being used for cell tower inspections? Maybe you can give us a little kind of before and after, like, Hey, when you were climbing originally, what was it like and what did you look for?

And all that stuff. And then, now that you have a drone that you can use, how does that change things and, and how is it being used?

Sam McGuire: Yeah. So when we were climbing, you can get a lot of amazing data on [00:03:00] tower, but you are kind of limited to the perspective of the climb path. And so when we initially got into the space, everybody was still trying to figure out what was going to be the approach.

And the undeliverables, there is an immense amount of value to just going out and conducting a flight. So you understand what climbers will operate, what kind of conditions they're deficiencies. Could impact the safety of elevated work. and then obviously you get a ton of amazing visual data from top to bottom 360 versus just a singular climb path.

So, just the 2D analytics side of it is pretty powerful. but over the last few years, the concept of this digital twin and flying for photogrammetric workflow has evolved in a really exciting way. So, right now, you probably see the industry split between the two. So guys are either going out for a solid 2D visual assessment to confirm items they might have in legacy documents, or they're going out and kind of setting a baseline for that asset by doing a full digital twin flight, processing it, [00:04:00] analyzing it, and then going back to end customer, whoever that might be, with a huge suite of analytics on the asset.

David Young: Yeah. And when you say 2D, you mean just like going up, snapping some photos of what's up on the tower?

Sam McGuire: Yeah, just kind of raw jpeg. Take a look, get some great context, and then probably answer the questions you need to. Yeah.

David Young: Now, for people who are unfamiliar with Towers, can you give an example of like when you were out climbing towers and you were, you were going up there to look at stuff, what were you inspecting?

Were you looking at like the equipment that was on there? Were you looking for like, damage to the tower, like. What is it that even someone even climbs up a tower for to go look at? Sure.

Sam McGuire: Yeah. So there's a, a group, the standards body in the industry is the Telecommunications Industry Association. We call it tia, and they have a standard called the 2 22, and that kind of governs exactly what we're looking for as it relates to condition and maintenance on an asset.

Loose connections, bent members, things that would impact safety, things that may have a [00:05:00] negative impact on the tenants, which would be all your carriers. and so we'd be up there taking a look, you know, climbing the climb path and then looking to each connecting point to make sure everything's snug, or documenting any kind of defects, which could be.

You know, damage to a steel member, but it could be rust because you're near the coast and it's an older steel structure. but I think when you look at today versus back then, the single biggest benefit is the safety side of it. When you just think about the ability to launch a flight prior to climbing and seeing, what the safety facilities look like at the top.

So, You're hooking into a three eight inch cable at the base of the tower, and then you're connected at the chest for that. You the top of really tall tower where obstruction or maybe you're, that there is some corrosion on that top terminator that kind of keeps you safe and connected to the tower. like, I think that like the thing that's

David Young: supposed to be holding you safely to the tower is [00:06:00] like potentially compromised and you don't even realize

Sam McGuire: it.

Yeah, definitely. And you just see that a lot. There's, you know, you have a 500 foot, span that you're, you're ascending. There's a lot of things that could happen. You even just basic things like obstructing a climb, right? if a carrier, let's say it's At&t, does an installation, sometimes you'll see, the mount gets installed over that wire.

So then when you get to that point on the tower, you have to then go onto a safety climb. So you're, you have these hooks that you are connected to the back of your harness and you have to ascend, pass that obstruction, and then get back onto.

David Young: Is that like you're instead having, being on a cable, you're now like attaching yourself to the structure to the tower to get around that thing, right?

Yep. Mm-hmm. I'm assuming that slowed you down quite

Sam McGuire: a bit. it's a slowdown, but you also just as much as you can avoid going off of a safety climb system, the better. Yeah. Right. So there's, there's an exciting amount of interest in using drones to very specifically hone in on how do we. assess and maintain [00:07:00] those safety claim systems and, and just keep contractors safe when they're off the ground, you

David Young: know?

Interesting. Very cool. So, so you're looking for like, like damage to the structure and, and loose connections you had all that stuff. And, and what was the you said there was a committee that came up with kind of like a standards. What was that standard again?

Sam McGuire: it's the TIA a 2 22.

So Tia, it essentially has a, has a section, lot of different sections that govern a lot of different approaches to analysis on a structure. But, there's one that is very specific to assessing the structure on a rotation. So every three to five years, every tower in America is supposed to get inspected.

Which is, you know, somewhere in like the 40,000 towers a year, kinda a number. Um, which means that it's super high volume workflow that could benefit a lot from all the things we're seeing. An efficiency game perspective with drones, which is super

David Young: exciting. Yeah, we'll link that. Document a resource up in case anybody really wants to nerd out on the specifics.

Uh, we'll put it on our Sure, yeah. Yeah. We'll put it on the, the, um, right up to this episode. awesome. what is like the process beginning to end for someone to use a [00:08:00] drone to, let's say create a, a digital twin of a cell tower inspection?

I'm, I know you, it's gonna. Maybe take too long to go into every little specific detail, but as best as you can, maybe start to finish. What does that process look like for someone who's never done

Sam McGuire: it before? Yeah, so I, so one of the things that is, um, obviously huge off the bat is getting, compliant with all of the potential network operators.

So every carrier and Tower Co has different requirements from, the way that you approach access to the site, the insurance you have to cover, you name it, right? So that's first and foremost for anybody that wants.

What kind of, documentation and training and everything you have to have to be able to be site. And we're building that out with Nate, so we'll have some best practice stuff that we'll be able to share as well. but then onsite, actually, as it's all evolved and, the hardware has gotten more, advanced and automated flight has gotten more sophisticated, flying a a structure has become a lot easier compared to five, six years ago.

There are a lot of teams out there, like the guys at Drone Link who [00:09:00] can help you really streamline the approach to flight where take the manual concept out of it almost completely outside of telling it where the center of the tower is. Maybe telling it where different elevations of antennas might be, and then.

Telling it where hazards and flight, floors might need to exist. And then

David Young: you like a big tree back to the tower that would get in your way or something.

Sam McGuire: Tree power lines, buildings, a lot of, you know, stuff that's out there, just out there in the wild. and then after that it's really making sure that.

what you're seeing from the drones focal point is staying centered on the structure and, the data quality that's gonna come off of that flight is strong. But, there's a lot of work being done and a lot of research over the last few years around getting into a place where, you know, the angles and the overlap and the flight parameters to really comprehensively get this done.

And I think that's become easier. Day over day, just cuz there's a lot more eyeballs on it than there were five years ago.

David Young: And then once you get all that data, which is basically just a collection of tons of photos from a bunch of different angles. Right. how does that then turn into a digital twin?

What's [00:10:00] that process like? Yeah. Is there any specific software you use?

Sam McGuire: So, a lot of the primary photogrammetry engines that have seen their user bases as it relates to the tower industry grow a lot over the years. I think early on horizontal flight and, and rendering for orthos and other, different kind 3D analytics was much easier than the vertical side of things with, telecommunication sector and.

Energy infrastructure, transmission towers and things like that, vertical renderings have gotten a lot better. So a lot of these off the shelf photogrammetry tools do have options for towers nowadays. I think for the, for the broader, u a s pilot community, there are probably a lot of folks out there that already have.

You know, contracts with, and customers who are providing that kind of thing. So there's kinda two different routes you can go. One is you become part of the operations out there and you're, you learn the flight path, you're given a ton of towers to go scan. and then there's kind of the turnkey, which would be getting that done, but then also getting involved on the photo as.

Gotcha.

David Young: [00:11:00] and so for instance like drone deploy, Pix, 4d, do those all have like tower options?

Sam McGuire: Yeah. and they're continuing to get better. Pix 4D has, one called Inspect that has gotten pretty sophisticated I think another indication that the tower sector's becoming a pretty significant focal point for community and all the end users are starting to really see the benefit of having additional context compared to just a climb back in the day.

Yep.

David Young: Cool. well, I mean I think that wraps it up for us. It's a great overview and drop some great knowledge, about towers and drones. So we will, have a write up on this and include some links to all the stuff you mentioned. But just wanted to say thanks, Sam, for coming on and letting us know.

Awesome.

Sam McGuire: Thanks for having me.