Autonomous Roof Inspection

[gml76]

Hello everyone! I have a DJI Phantom 3 Pro and I would like to fly an autonomous mission over a 30-45 degree pitched rooftop to perform an inspection of it. I want to fly a grid pattern, taking a photo every few feet at about 10 feet elevation from the rooftop at all times.

I've used Pix4D Capture to fly a grid, but it will only fly at a hard set altitude of 30, 60, 90 etc. feet. I've looked into DJI's Ground Station Pro too. It seems that it might have some fairly powerful features and capabilities, but I don't really know for sure.

Does anyone know of a program/system that will enable this type of precision flight? Thank you!

 

[RodPad]

Welcome to the Forum!

Hum I surprised nobody has replied, but

"I've used Pix4D Capture to fly a grid, but it will only fly at a hard set altitude of 30, 60, 90 etc. feet. I've looked into DJI's Ground Station Pro too. It seems that it might have some fairly powerful features and capabilities, but I don't really know for sure."

Maybe you scared some of us, I have know idea about this statement. Well I help you keep it busy for awhile.

Rod

 

[Fester]

Not sure about the downward vision on the P3P, but the phantom's sonar "pings" would be deflected 90 degrees by a 45 deg. angled roof. no or little return signal if the P3P is using it for position.

 

[Richard R]

Not sure about the downward vision on the P3P, but the phantom's sonar "pings" would be deflected 90 degrees by a 45 deg. angled roof. no or little return signal if the P3P is using it for position.

Not really, unless the roof is polished metal. A standard shingled roof is a diffused enough surface that you should get a good VPS return. Bigger issue is do any of these programs use VPS for waypoint type missions or just the altimeter? VPS helps to maintain a set height agl in 'P' mode, but how much input does it have in 'F'? Flying autonomously 10 ft above a roof surface that is '?' Feet above the take off point will be tricky to set up. The OP did say that he wanted to maintain 10 ft or so 'above the rooftop'. If that is what he meant and not 'above the roof surface', it's pretty easy to fly up and estimate the height of the roof ridge. Tracking down a sloped surface will be trickier. Hope he's up on his trigonometry!

 

[Loz]

Phantom 3 Pro and I would like to fly an autonomous mission over a 30-45 degree pitched rooftop to perform an inspection of it. I want to fly a grid pattern, taking a photo every few feet at about 10 feet elevation from the rooftop at all times.

Does anyone know of a program/system that will enable this type of precision flight? Thank you!

This sounds like a risky flight to automate, but Litchi or the Dji app you considered could do it I believe, but have not done roofs myself. With say Litchi - you set up everything about the flight (height, camera angle, waypoints etc) before you fly. The key challenge is the roof incline - phantom 3 does not follow terrain / height like I understand the Mavic or P4 can, so I think you would have to use waypoints at every point you wanted a photo (or shoot video & screen cap later). Waypoints have position and altitude so could handle roof incline. Not ideal but hope this helps

 

[gml76]

Not really, unless the roof is polished metal. A standard shingled roof is a diffused enough surface that you should get a good VPS return. Bigger issue is do any of these programs use VPS for waypoint type missions or just the altimeter? VPS helps to maintain a set height agl in 'P' mode, but how much input does it have in 'F'? Flying autonomously 10 ft above a roof surface that is '?' Feet above the take off point will be tricky to set up. The OP did say that he wanted to maintain 10 ft or so 'above the rooftop'. If that is what he meant and not 'above the roof surface', it's pretty easy to fly up and estimate the height of the roof ridge. Tracking down a sloped surface will be trickier. Hope he's up on his trigonometry!

Thank you for the replies! I think I need to clarify something. I do want to maintain about a 10 foot elevation above the roof's surface.

 

[Fester]

Thank you for the replies! I think I need to clarify something. I do want to maintain about a 10 foot elevation above the roof's surface.

If I get it correctly, you would want the Phantom to follow basically an "imaginary 45 deg. line" 10' above, (from peak of roof to gutter for home with a 45 deg. slanted roof) autonomously? I don't think that anything you're going to be able to do without extremely specialized hardware/software. I'm not exactly sure (but would like to know) if the Phantom uses barometric or sonar, or both to maintain flight level a low altitude. To check for myself whether the Phantom's Sonar would give good return from say an angled 45 degree surface of varying types, I used my oldie but goodie ultrasonic "tape measure" to test, and off a metal or slate type roof, the pulse is going to reflect off and away from the Phantom at 90 deg. Other roof types might give you some diffuse reflection but It wouldn't be anything I, or the Phantoms flight system is going to trust. So, bottom line you'd have to do a strict manual flight...

 

[Loz]

Fair points - the Phantom uses barometer for altitude (GPS obviously for position) and VPS as well when low - as would be the case in this roofing requirement. I'd test on ground somewhere that approximates a 45 degree bank like the roof & try cresting a mission and flying up and down it - you should pretty quickly and safely see if it's possible. Terrain following capabilities of the Mavic (which I don't have) sound like what's required here though to me..

 

[Jobsite Aerial]

So Kespry has a drone specifically for shingle roof inspection. You can accurately measure and supposedly software will automatically detect hail damage. Pretty slick for $40K per year lease. (Only way Kespry does it) I fly a Kespry for survey...same drone but my camera is on angle while roof model camera is pointed straight down and higher resolution. Seems if you laid approximately 4 ground control points and used survey flight control you could accurately measure a roof with the P4. I'm interested in being able to do this with my P4Pro but have not found a software to find roof damage from images. Thoughts???

 

[P4P Flyer]

The “software” you’d need would have to be a pretty powerful machine learning development. You’d raise it up from a simple child to a sophisticated program by feeding it massive amounts of data and it would learn the differ t types of roofing damage. It’s not likely to be an outta the box solution for a while, but multiple companies are tackling it with ML techniques.
Geomni
AirWare
Loveland
Kespry
Precision hawk
.... anyone see anyone else out there seeing anyone different? Subscription based services range from a few hundred a month to $50k annual.