Prospective Configurations Of Optical Systems For Smart Remote Visual Testing Conducted With The Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Remote visual testing of infrastructure power plants and other important constructions is regularly conducted. It is regularly a crucial way of collecting data about the surface conditions and overall functionality of the tested objects. It includes a large number of technical environmental and economic parameters because of what researchers and experts constantly try to optimise it. The use of unmanned aerial vehicles popularly known as drones is a novel currently rather undeveloped approach to conducting the remote visual testing. In this paper we present and develop a concept of a smart configuration for remote visual testing. It is innovative in that it includes a manipulator mounted onto an unmanned aerial vehicle of rotocopter type. Presence of a manipulator makes possible considerably augmented scope of remote visual testing in comparison with other approaches. Prerequisites for as well as consequences of such an innovation are analysed and mutually compared.