RESHAPING ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT PRACTICES FOR O&M USING UNMANNED AERIAL VEHICLES

Advances in technology are re-shaping and re-engineering prospective and practices, operation and maintenance is one field that is also changing to promptly adapt to such advances. Recently, drones have been introduced as an efficient alternative for traditional inspection practices. While, the state of practice for inspection is still adapting with terminologies such as laser scanning, the use of drones is starting to spread out and probably shall dominate within the coming decade. This paper presents a comparative effort performed to identify strengths and weaknesses of using drone in inspection with regards to state of practice traditional techniques. An initial swift over drone historical and technical aspects is portrayed together with further discussion on latest paradigm shifts with real world practices. A detailed comparison is additionally presented with a conclusion summarizing benefits of drones over traditional.