The news that a consortium of 16 entities have won funding to develop and test a remotely operated drone system for industrial and urban environments, shows yet another leap of progress for the drone and property industries.  

Traditional methods of carrying out property inspections can involve erecting scaffolding and digging down into the soil beneath a property.  

As technology evolves these routine inspections are more likely to be carried out by drone. Those in the property industry already using drones, will appreciate their benefits:

• Installation of scaffolding can be avoided. Scaffolding can be expensive and time consuming to install.
• Inaccessible and dangerous areas are all accessible by drone, without putting individuals at risk.
• Measurements are taken much faster. As such, more data can be gathered in the same period and greater land mass covered.
• Vegetation may not need to be damaged. For example, if you wanted to find from where a long water pipe was leaking, you could use a drone with advanced sensors to avoid digging up the land.

Notwithstanding the advantages conferred by drones to the property industry, there are limitations. Currently, a drone operator needs to be deployed with the drone to the relevant site.

The system being developed by the 16 entities could see drones flying to the relevant site unaccompanied by a drone operator, carrying out the inspection and flying back to a nearby base. Operators will be able to control the drone from miles away. The time and cost savings are very obvious and the time lag from instruction to survey only stands to be reduced.

This is an exciting project for the property industry to follow.