Last time, we looked at what smart construction is and the background behind its emergence.
This time, we want to explore drones, a technology that forms the foundation of all smart construction technologies and one of the fastest-growing fields within it.
A drone refers to an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). In particular, rotary-wing quadcopters are commonly called drones. Drones were initially developed and used for military purposes, but their range of use is expanding into civilian applications, and recently the market for industrial drones has been growing.
Among these, the construction sector is growing especially fast.
What do drones mean for the construction industry, and why should we use them?
Meissa sees the convergence of construction and drones as an innovation in spatial data collection.
Drones make it possible to quickly gather extensive information across a construction site, which greatly reduces the time and cost of the traditional surveying stage. A site that would take two to three weeks to survey using conventional methods can be completed in just one to four days once drones are introduced.
Drones also make process management and communication more efficient. Using construction drone data platforms such as Meissa or DroneDeploy, you can track progress very easily, and various stakeholders such as project owners, developers, and contractors can share site information transparently in real time and communicate with one another.
Because of these many advantages, world-leading construction firms and CM companies such as Vinci, ACS, Bechtel, and Key have already adopted drones and are actively using them.
In Korea, too, there have been attempts to use drones, mainly led by general construction companies. But because the drone data platforms were all foreign-made and too difficult to use, it was hard to roll them out on-site, and full-scale adoption had been delayed, that was the reality.
Fortunately, domestic platforms such as the Carta platform have recently been developed, and thanks to the steady interest and effort of construction companies, they are gradually being adopted, so we have good reason to look forward to the future of Korea's smart construction technology.
Next time, we'll look at the drone data platforms that are essential for putting drones to work!
