Autonomy unlocks new drone use cases to improve safety and efficiency

Summary

• Sundt Construction, a general contractor specializing in transportation, industrials, building, and renewables.
• Sundt’s drone program started in 2013 and has grown to include over 30 drones used for as-built assessments and business development.
• After adopting Skydio 2 in 2020, and 3D Scan in 2021, Sundt already projects a full transition to autonomous drones. By the end of 2021, Sundt will have its entire fleet composed of Skydio autonomous drones.

Sundt is using 3D Scan to create incredibly detailed and highly accurate models. We are using them to replace traditional means of 3D modeling with either manual drones or ground-based inspection, which are highly user-intensive and have high failure rates.

Dean Miller

Virtual Construction Engineer

Challenges

• Ground-based inspections require workers to climb structures to high altitudes and potentially expose themselves to additional hazards such as radiation or superheated pressure
• Manual drones are hard to fly and easy to crash, requiring extensive pilot training, introducing ground risk to the operations, and limiting the use cases - particularly in GPS-denied or metallic environments

Solutions

• Skydio 2 enables pilots to perform up-close aerial inspection on any job site, even in GPS-denied environments, thanks to its trustworthy obstacle avoidance and AI-based pilot assistance functionality
• Skydio 3D Scan allows for fully autonomous data capture, so that pilots can generate complete datasets of overlapping photos at high resolution of any scene in minutes
• Drone data has helped Sundt’s team of 25+ part-time pilots deliver value at dozens of construction sites

Results

• Up to 90% reduction in time to inspect
• Improved worker safety by switching from ground inspections to Skydio 3D Scan
• Reduced pilot training requirements by 50%

We’re going to take those 3D models from 3D Scan and incorporate them into our Building Information Modeling (BIM) coordination meetings to help us predict the future and coordinate building logistics before our project teams see the issue.

Dean Miller

Virtual Construction Engineer