You can use the Elios 2 to capture both visual and thermal data as it carries an optical camera, a thermal camera, and a powerful lighting system.

The ELIOS 2’s payload comes with:

• A 4K Ultra HD camera
• A FLIR thermal camera
• LED lighting with 10,000 lumens.

ELIOS 2 also captures a few other types of data:

• Visual data
• Thermal data
• Measurement data
• Flight parameter data
• Aircraft information

The short answer to this question is about 10 minutes.

Can the flight time be further increased?

As you must have understood the ELIOS 2 is engineered for indoor use and, as such, can’t be compared like for like to any other aircraft on the market. Its configuration makes it the best of its kind to navigate confined spaces and manage collisions. It is also one of the only drones that can pretty much land anywhere, which may significantly extend the mission time depending on the asset configuration

However, due to its size and the limited amount of space available inside the cage, the ELIOS 2 has smaller propellers than its outdoor counterparts with a similar weight. The consequence of this is a higher disk loading (thrust/propulsion surface), which requires a higher propeller rotation speed leading to a reduced motor efficiency and a much higher noise level. In other words, the ELIOS 2 is not optimized for flight performance but collision resilience.

When the ELIOS 2 was engineered the size was factored in first. Then Flyability had to find the best compromise between flight time and the ability to sustain and recover from collisions. If you are looking into inspecting confined spaces and want to reach success in your venture, you’ll have to consider trading a few minutes of flight time against the peace-of-mind provided by a design field-proven for indoor use.

How can I ensure this is enough for my mission?

Whether our products fit your needs is up to your judgment. In the end, only you know how and where you want to use drones. However, here are a few points to consider when assessing if the flight time of ELIOS 2 is enough for your mission.

It takes only a few seconds to swap an empty battery for a full one. If you go through proper mission planning, you can easily breakdown your inspection into unitary flight segments, which are covered in less than 10 minutes. Every flight segment will be performed with a full battery, and you will come back to your base station to swap the battery in between flights. These breaks in your flight plan is also an excellent opportunity to review the footage captured during the last flight and ensure you’ve got all the data you need. When planning for the acquisition of an ELIOS 2, it is essential to consider the number of batteries you’ll need. We recommend 9 batteries for a full day of inspection, provided that you can set up a charging station on the spot.

Confined spaces are usually small. One could argue that a lot of time is lost in getting back and forth from the base station to the spot to inspect, and this is true. However, confined spaces are usually small, so the distance base-station – point-of-interest is rarely discriminatory to deploy our technology, leaving plenty of time to capture the data you need. Keep in mind that if you don’t do it with a drone, a living person will have to do it, or it won’t be done at all. The choice is yours.

The drone is not ATEX rated.

There’s not a good track record of drone companies trying to produce ATEX products. There was one french company that tried called Xamen – You can look them up – They went bankrupt last year. They were bankrolled by TOTAL – So not exactly lightweight.

The two main issues with ATEX rating are; the propellors and the static energy they create, and the battery. Even if you were to switch to wood propellors you would still have the battery. Nonetheless, the majority of our clients, especially here in the UK come from the Oil and Gas industry. So for the most part, a hot work permit would give you all the leeway you need in order to operate in a tank or another ATEX regulated area.

There is a great article where you can read more about this subject on Flyability’s website.

Flyability have done inspections inside nitrogen-filled environments and it works fine, you just need to have a safe recovery system. Obviously if for whatever reason, the drone can’t be recovered safely after the inspection then either you wait for the area to be purged with oxygen or you need to ensure that you can recover the drone without sending a person in there – which negates the idea of using drones to avoid people going into confined spaces.

We have tested it and it works.

A lot of it comes down to prior knowledge of the asset. So you would never fly into an area where you do not have access to blueprints or are not stood next to the engineer that can tell you; “so from here you go there… ETC”. A lot of it comes down to practice, there is a learning curve, tunnels are notoriously difficult, sewers are the same, a boiler or a pressure vessel are relatively easy to navigate.

Included in our ELIOS 2 package is an in-depth handover including training that plays a huge part in adopting the technology into your business. The training includes not just how to fly the drone but also how to plan an inspection from A to B including battery management and risk avoidance.

The main mission of the company and it’s purpose is to avoid putting humans into confined spaces.

It’s a product that has a pitch for everyone that you talk to inside a company. If you’re talking to the CFO – you show them the kinds of savings that can be made on inspecting confined spaces, they will be blown away. If you’re speaking to an operations manager then you can tell him that he doesn’t need to put his people up a scaffold or on a rope to inspect a chimney – He’s going to be really happy with that. And when you talk to the maintenance people you can tell them that you can cut in half the shutdown time. Once again, it’s going to be an immediate win.

So regardless of who you pitch it to there is a positive argument to be made; in terms of money, health and safety and business efficiency.

Price is on application so if you’d like a quote then get in touch with us on the form below. There are Finance options if you’d like to add the ELIOS 2 to your fleet but spread out the cost of the payment, for example you could pay £800-£1K pm for 3 years.