Does a drone belong in the same field as bull dozers or excavators? What would its job be? How can something that flies be involved with steel heavy equipment?
It is hard to imagine, but drones could play a vital role next to heavy equipment. At least on the sity surveying and project management side of things. What a project manager goes out to the site to survey what type of work that needs to be done, one of the things he is looking at is the elevation of the area. There is techonlogy that can be attached to a drone that can ready the elevations of the area within the boundaries of your projects location. This will greatly help when planning the project because by identifying the highs and lows of the area you know where to add or where to cut the material.
Having a drone do a site survey for heavy equipment can save a ton of money and speed up a lengthy process. Site surveying is a vital skill that trained professionals learn how to do, and although a drone is not going to do the calculations that are required to give a timeline on a project, it will help obtain the information quicker than it used to. These drones are much more accurate and much more cost effectiveness when it comes to estimates.
A drone can see the whole project at one time. When a surveyor walks onto his project, he can only see what is right there in front of him. With the use of drones, the surveyor can now view a project from above, providing a view of the whole project. Below is a photo from a drone of a most of a project that displays the highs and lows of the project. Now, could you imagine walking this whole site to measure in multiple locations to get the elevations? It would take hours and the information gathered would still be just an estimation which was not very accurate. With the drone gathering this information it provides much more accurate information to obtain a more accurate estimation.
Heavy Equipment 