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Canadian UAVs completes its first pipeline inspection

Published by , Assistant Editor
World Pipelines,


Canadian UAVs and Lockheed Martin CDL Systems have completed their first beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) pipeline inspections. The companies used the Lockheed Martin Indago 2 for the inspection, which took place at the Foremost testing range.

They successfully performed multiple BVLOS operations to inspect several pipelines, wellheads and powerlines. Canadian UAVs aims to provide technologies that ensure safe and economic data acquisition for oil and gas, as well as other industrial assets.

“It's a milestone our team has been working towards for years,” said Sean Greenwood, President of Canadian UAVs Inc. "Going BVLOS has technically been solved for some time with regards to powerful communications links and autopilot hardware.

“Canadian UAVs has been focused on creating an end-to-end paradigm in co-ordination with Transport Canada to conduct these operations outside of Restricted Military Airspace, where our customers have a substantial regulatory and logistical needs to acquire actionable data.”

John Molberg, Business Development lead for Lockheed Martin CDL Systems commented: “We are pleased that Canadian UAVs has selected our Indago 2 aircraft system with mobile ground control station as a solution for their commercial enterprise.”

Meanwhile, Beau Chaitan, Environmental and Regulatory Engineer MEG Energy, stated: “The ability to use BVLOS for UAV inspection and survey purposes would considerably increase safety, economic, and environmental considerations. As many of the assets and areas we are interested in surveying are located in regions of dense, muskeg and access is significantly limited. Using traditional techniques on the ground for performing integrity inspections on remote sites or conducting reclamation monitoring would require the construction of either winter ice roads, or extensive summer access. This is not only an expensive exercise, but it's also environmentally disruptive, as it creates numerous linear disturbances that potentially affect wildlife. BVLOS with a UAV is an improvement over performing inspections and monitoring with a manned helicopter as it is safer from a worker exposure point-of-view.”

Read the article online at: https://www.worldpipelines.com/business-news/15032017/canadian-uavs-completes-its-first-pipeline-inspection/

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