A team of three students from the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK, have developed a drone fitted with a thermal camera that can monitor buildings’ energy efficiency.
Being developed by Americo Pino, Ken Brooksbank and Kai Pham, the new concept is designed to give a comprehensive evaluation of energy use.
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The civil and environmental engineering students are also intending to commercialise their concept and have named their start-up as Drone Wrangler. They are currently exploring the diversity and viability of the new drone technology to create environmental value across various industries, including energy, agriculture and construction.
Pino said: "Energy efficiency is important in buildings for environmental and economic reasons but some equipment used to measure it is expensive and doesn’t always give a full reading.
"Drones can make these types of inspections more comprehensive and thermal imaging technology takes this a step further. Our drone lifts off automatically and can link to around 17 satellites at a time, so it’s very precise in the images it takes and very safe to fly.
"We’ve also had a lot of support from the university’s estates services, particularly Ian McKay in building services and energy, and environmental manager Dean Drobot."
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By GlobalDataA test flight was recently conducted, in which the drone surveyed four buildings on Strathclyde’s campus, namely the Wolfson, Architecture, John Anderson and Sir William Duncan buildings, as well as a fifth building at the university’s playing fields at Stepps.
Each evaluation took nearly 30min and the students are currently analysing the data.
