Heliguy at Geo Business 2019 - Live Updates

Heliguy is excited to be exhibiting at this years Geo Business 2019. We will be posting live feeds during the event to keep you updated as things happen.

Day 1

9am

Show opens.

Day one is under way and the Heliguy stand is ready and our expert team are raring to go.

We will be showcasing our new HECTIC R&D consultancy and drones such as the DJI Phantom 4 RTK and M210 RTK V2. We are on stand E8. If you're at the show, please come and see us!

9:57am

Ruairi talks about what Heliguy have to offer at the show.

Want to come and visit us? We will be at stand E8 for the whole event.

11:20am

Graham Brown, CEO of ARPAS, said that the forecast for the drone economy is 'very big'.

A slide during his presentation said that by 2030 the U.K. Drone economy would see a £43Bn increase in GDP, 628,000 jobs and lead to £16Bn of net cost savings.

11:30am

Tobias Wentzler, European ebusiness development manager for DJI said that 80% of commercial drone operators in Europe are using drones for aerial surveying.

He added that drones are resulting in time savings of up to 50%.

11:50am

Paul Bryan, Geospatial Imaging Manager, Historic England, said that drones have become an important tool for heritage and conservation.

He said that drones provide a unique vantage point for low level imagery of heritage sites and structures and they are useful for mapping, inspection, monitoring, presentation and research.

They are also useful tools as they can carry a range of sensors and can operate in confined spaces.

Mr Bryan said that drones have a part to play in heritage.

One example of drones being used for conservation projects is the medieval Bishops' Palace in Lincoln where drone imagery is being used to help the phased conservation programme.

12:15pm

Toby Townrow, of Drone Evolution, has set out the benefits of using a tethered drone. He said that a tethered drone is useful for traffic monitoring, flood monitoring, border security, firefighting, the police and event security.

He added that in one case in Wales, 9 people stood around a roundabout to count the traffic. He said a tethered drone would have been so useful in this case, reducing the number of people needed and providing data such as identifying traffic types.

Heliguy has an Elistair tethering system at our Geo Business Show stand (E8). To find out more, come and meet our team.

Geoff Pugh, of Consortiq, said that negative drone incidents and press reports, such as the disruption at Gatwick in December, are detracting from the positive use cases12:30pm

12.50pm

Jim Morris, of Drone Surveying Ltd, said that drones need to be taken seriously in the world of surveying.

He said that drone data was extremely powerful, allowing you to capture a 3D representation of your site, measure stockpiles, check site progress and use PDF overlays to give you a real-time view of how your project is developing against your original plans.

1:40pm

James Dunthorne, of ARPAS, spoke about how drones are helping in surveying.

He said that, when it comes to measured building surveys, a drone compliments existing data capture by making elevated sections easier to access and improves health and safety as workers do not need to work from a height, as the drone will do it for you.

3:50pm

Stephen Brooks, Senior Engineer at Network Rail, has described how the organisation is harnessing the power of drones.

He explained that UAVs are bringing a range of benefits.

These include:

• Increasing workforce safety

• Increasing awareness of positional data accuracy (relative and absolute)

• Providing useful insights about localised elevation changes and vegetation propagation analysis

Endorsing the use of drones, he said that this technology is a great time-saver, with the actual data collection (the drone flying over the site) accounting for only 10% of time spent on a certain project.

He described drones as 'really powerful technology'.

4:10pm - That's a wrap!

That concludes today's presentations about how drones are an incredibly useful tool for a range of industries.

What have we learnt? Drones enhance efficiency, improve safety and provide a unique view of a project.

Certainly this industry shows no signs of slowing down. In fact, earlier today, James Dunthorne, from ARPAS, set out his vision of future trends in the drone industry. These were:

• Digitisation: James believes that 3D models will be utilised more and more.

• Miniaturisation: His second prediction is that drones will only get smaller. 'We have already seen it with the Mavic. Drones will just get smaller and smaller,' he says.

• Autonomy: James believes that over the next five or 10 years, drone autonomy will increase. 'Drones will get slicker, faster and more automated,' he says.

Perhaps the benefit of drones was best summed up by Graham Brown, CEO of ARPAS, earlier today, when he said: 'Drones will end up being a lot safer, faster and cheaper than a manned alternative in a lot of cases. That is why the drone market will take off and grow.'

Day 2

9am: It's the second and final day of Geo Business 2019. The Heliguy team is on our stand (E8), so pop in and say hello.

10.45am

David McKittrick, of Blue Marble Geographics, has shown how you can create a useful 3D point cloud and a Digital Terrain Model (DTM) from simple drone images.

This is beneficial for numerous reasons. Taking a case study in Brazil, David was able to calculate material volumes.

Other 3D analysis applications include contour generation, feature extraction (i.e. Measuring the height of trees, for example) and flow modeling. He said that these 3D visualisations are a lot more visually appealing and easier to understand than a 2D alternative.

He used GlobalMapper, a desktop GIS application tool, to create the 3D point cloud and carry out the measurements

He added that, in the context of mapping and GIS, there is a lot you can do with drone imagery, transforming that data into something 'that is useful and can be used in your workflow'.

12.10pm

The team from GisOnLine have shown how drones can be a useful tool for inspecting and monitoring power lines.

They showed DRONonLine - a software tool which helps you utilise the data you have collected.

1:00pm

A glowing endorsement of drones in one of the most recent seminars. The message was that drones save time, enhance safety and are incredibly versatile tools.Some stand out figures were that, in one case, using a drone saved 600 hours of downtime.

Another was that carrying out a drone survey of a 200-acre site took just half a day to lay out some ground control points and fly the drone to capture the data, followed by three days to process this data. Traditional methods would have taken up to three weeks to capture this information and then a further week to process the data!

2.10pm

Pix4D has spoken about why it's software is a great tool to convert drone imagery into really useful data.

Using Pix4D, you can convert your drone images into 3D models for analysis. This gives you some useful insights about your project and helps you to monitor the evolution of the site.

A quick video tour of the Geo Business show 2019.

We're coming to the end of Geo Business 2019 and it's been a great year. Organisers have confirmed that as of midday today there has been an 8% overall increase in visitors and exhibitors compared to last year and a 12% increase in visitors this time round2:50pm

3:00pm

Great to see our friends from London Fire Brigade today.

We supply them with drones and sensors and they have endorsed our rental service.

London Fire Brigade said that drones play a vital part in their life-saving work, providing vital situational awareness.

4:00pm

That's it folks! Geo Business 2019 has come to an end. Heliguy is delighted to have been part of the event. We've spoken to a lot of visitors about our drone rental programme and the DJI Phantom 4 RTK has also been a key talking point. To find out more about our services, don't hesitate to contact us.