Drone Technology in Construction

About this course.

Drones are used in construction principally as flying sensor platforms: they carry a camera or other instrument to a vantage point a person cannot easily or safely reach, and bring back images or measurements. The short answer to "what do they do" is that a single small aircraft can survey and map a site, monitor progress, inspect structures, measure quantities, and produce communication imagery — tasks that previously needed surveyors on foot, elevated work platforms, scaffolding, rope-access technicians or even a crewed helicopter. Understanding the range of applications is the first step to using the technology well.

Site surveys and mapping are among the most valuable applications. By flying a planned grid and capturing many overlapping photographs, a drone lets specialist software reconstruct the site as a three-dimensional model, an orthomosaic (a corrected, map-accurate aerial image) or a point cloud. From these outputs a team can derive contours, surfaces and measurements across an entire site far faster than by walking it with traditional instruments. On large or complex earthworks the time saving can be substantial, and repeat flights create a dated record of how the ground has changed. The accuracy of such outputs depends heavily on method — particularly the use of ground control points and correct processing — which is developed later in this course; the important point here is that mapping is a mainstream use, not an experimental one.