Uncrewed Systems Technology 049 - April/May 2023

112 The flight itself took about 15 minutes and used up about half the battery capacity. The priority was to cover all the panels with both cameras, ensuring that they were all imaged both from high level to show overall patterns and in close-up to reveal small details. “Both data collection and analysis rely on a knowledge of thermography,” Hinsley says. “The price of thermal imaging equipment is coming down, but you can easily capture images incorrectly and misinterpret them if you do not have the relevant training and experience.” Post-flight processing Alongside thermographic cameras, the associated image processing software is continually improving, with recent developments enhancing productivity, for example. “The ability to thermally tune and batch-process images is a big time-saver on larger sites,” Hinsley says. DroneWorks used Teledyne FLIR’s Thermal Studio suite to assess the Bleasdale images. According to FLIR, the software supports any camera that generates images in radiometric JPEG format. FLIR describes Thermal Studio as analysis and reporting software designed to help thermographers manage thousands of thermal and visual stills and videos, whether they were taken using handheld or UAV-mounted cameras, providing automation and processing capabilities to streamline the workflow. Batch processing, for example, enables the user to prepare thousands of images at once, while the software’s image editing suite includes zoom and pan functions, colour palette changes, measurement tools, and automatic adjustment of temperature scales, annotations and so on. Thermal Studio also helps with the creation of reports tailored to each customer by providing predefined and custom templates, with drag-and-drop functionality with which the user can add hundreds of images to the report with one action. It also exports reports in XPS spreadsheet or PDF format without the need for additional software such as Microsoft Office. Further, a video editing function allows inspection highlights to be shared. However, there are still hardware/ software compatibility issues that remain unresolved, Hinsley notes. “Software is dependent on the equipment used,” he says. “For example, an image taken with a FLIR camera cannot be used with Fluke software.” The UAV flight confirmed that the main problem at Bleasdale was that one whole string of modules – amounting to half the array – was faulty, causing a 50% loss in performance, Hinsley says. Short-circuit chessboard What the IR imagery revealed was a characteristic chessboard pattern of hot elements in the affected modules, indicating that they were April/May 2023 | Uncrewed Systems Technology Despite their low resolution, small micro-bolometer radiometric cameras reveal the chessboard pattern of overheated cells in a string of solar panels The M210 RTK’s replacement is the more capable M300 RTK, shown here with a smaller Mavic 2, and their regular transport