Grasshopper Surveying Services Limited is a UK-based company drawing on the insights of co-founder, Eric Foster, a pilot with a lifelong passion for aviation. Eric has a successful aircraft charter business and has recently been awarded South Africa’s fourth drone license application. He has moved operations to the UK to create a global footprint for the Grasshopper solution.

Grasshopper plans to develop key innovations that are needed to open up a lucrative industrial applications market:

• A portable wide-area multi-channel drone communications system
• Centimetre accurate DGPS, using the portable communications tower
• Integration of low-cost LiDAR with photogrammetry
• Internal combustion engines capable of six hours of flight time
• Development of hydrogen replacements for ICE-based solutions above

These innovations will enable civilian drones to reliably perform tasks that were not previously possible. These include:

• 360-degree high resolution photos
• Close range LiDAR accuracy images with photogrammetry colouration which will enable cracks and fatigue to be identified in cables and other remote infrastructure
• Thermal imaging

Overcoming challenges

Drones have become a multi-billion-dollar industry where they could redefine digital content creation, surveillance, logistics, defence and environmental surveying. However drones face a number of challenges before their potential is realised. These include:

• An unacceptably high risk of accidents destroys drones every 10 – 20 trips, making it uneconomic to install expensive sensors on the drone
• Intermittent GPS signals and communications networks that cause drones to lose their flight paths
• Misleading Geographical Information System (GIS) data due to a paucity of up-to-date surveying data in the developing world.
• The need for line-of-site communications restricting distance
• Lack of range
• The need of small, light sensors restricts applications

These restrictions have meant that drones have largely been the preserve of the hobbyist, where industry applications have been decidedly conceptual. Grasshopper plans to solve a number of these problems as well as innovating new light-weight sensors to install onto drones to create profitably new industry niches using the sensor data.

The combination of flight safety systems will not only protect the drone and its expensive sensors, but could also have applications for improving flight safety for smaller manned aerial vehicles.

Minimising risks

Grasshopper plans to enhance the safety of the aircraft and surveying equipment whilst conducting the aerial surveying operations. Before identifying solutions to improve safety, it is of paramount importance that we fully understand the risks which the operation may face, the likelihood of each risk occurring and the severity of each risk. We have identified the risks in table 1.1. Furthermore, we have rated the likelihood and severity of each risk occurring as well as provided a risk result which is an indication of the significance of each risk.

Risk	Risk Description
Wind	Winds above 30 knots have a negative impact on aircraft control
Precipitation	Severe precipitation influences visibility and has a negative impact on visual navigation
Poor Visibility	Including poor light, fog, cloud cover or smoke has a negative impact on visual navigation
Low altitude flight	Flying at low altitudes reduces response time required for a pilot to make critical decisions.
Flying over built up areas	A law governed by the CAA is that no aircraft shall fly within 300m of a man built object
Collision with man-made object	A major risk of the operation involves the collision with man-made infrastructure (Telecommunications masts, Electric pylons, telephone cables etc.)
Pilot information overload	Too much information relayed to the pilot can interfere with the pilot’s concentration levels
Pilot receiving incorrect information	Receiving incorrect information can confuse the pilot and interfere with the pilot’s decision making ability.

Innovation

Drones have proven successful tools for commercial surveying projects but have the risk of a high frequency of crashes. This makes them unsuitable for housing the expensive equipment necessary for performing advanced surveys in the industrial sector. In response to this problem Grasshopper’s first innovation is to build a 4-step drone safety system that will eliminate the hazard of unseen obstacles using a combination of:

• Photogrammetry
• Simulation and pre-recorded route testing
• LiDAR
• Real-time multi-frequency communication of data
• Thermal imaging

The proposed data collection and communications system is helped by an initial lower-risk high altitude flyover at 1600ft which will gather topographical data for the accurate 3-dimensional visualisation of the surface. This will be used for pre-flight planning and avoidance of obstacles and man-made structures. Real-time LiDAR scanning and a dedicated communication network will further mean that the pilot can be warned of any hazards that have not been previously seen or planned for. The communication network has the added benefit of enabling the accurate positioning of collected data.