There is often a lot of confusion about what it means to be a professional drone pilot. In this post, we explore the 4 critical steps it takes to become a professional drone pilot.
POB Column: From Drone to Drawing: the Full Workflow
In the conversations we have had with hundreds of land surveyors, civil engineers, and other mapping professionals about starting a drone program, we often see themes arise. One of the most problematic of these is the tendency of businesses to go about the process of setting up a drone program completely backwards. In our most recent column for Point of Beginning, we discuss how to design a drone program with a focus instead on workflow.
Commercial UAV News: Drones for Aggregates in 2017
In their recent free report "How are Mining & Aggregates Professionals Using Drones in 2017?" Aerotas co-founders Logan Campbell and Daniel Katz lend their perspective from having helped mining operations and the land surveyors that service them to successfully incoporate the benefits of drone operations.
POB Column: Can a Drone Make You More Profit?
With dozens of land surveyors, civil engineers, and other mapping professionals using our drone mapping system on a daily basis, we have a great opportunity to learn about all the ways that a drone actually enables bottom-line benefit. In a guest column with Point of Beginning in April, we break down the four primary ways we hear back from our clients that a drone is improving their operations and making them more profitable: efficiency, protection, savings, and communication.
POB Guest Column: To Succeed With Drones, Keep it Simple
If we seem to be repeating ourselves, it's because this is one of the most important things we have learned: the companies that succeed with drone surveying are the ones that start simply. In our February 2017 guest column in Point of Beginning Magazine, we detail what this approach involves and the benefits it offers.
Guest Article in California Surveyor: FAA Drone Laws for Surveyors
On the heels of the implementation of the FAA's new commercial drone laws, called Part 107, the team at California Surveyor Magazine once again asked Aerotas to weigh in on what surveyors need to know.
Our Guest Column in Point of Beginning, October
Aerotas was honored when Point of Beginning magazine asked us to follow up our article in the September issue with another in October. In October's guest column, titled "Drone Dos and Don’ts," Aerotas co-founders Logan Campbell and Daniel Katz cover just that: what does a survey drone do well, and what does it not do well? This topic is crucial to understand for surveyors considering starting survey drone operations.
What a Surveyor Needs to Know to Start Mapping by Drone: Making Value from Drone Deliverables
This third in our series of posts expanding on our article in Cal Surveyor covers how the deliverables a mapping drone produces translate into real value for surveyors. We dig into how value comes in the form of increasing crew efficiency, minimizing reliance on aerial contractors, record-collection, and reducing crew risk.
Our Guest Column in Point of Beginning, September
The co-founders of Aerotas were featured as Guest Columnists in this month’s Point of Beginning magazine. The focus of the article is on the critical steps in developing a survey drone program. The article covers the crucial categories of technology (hardware and software), operations, insurance, and regulation. In our experience, operations and workflow management are the most critical but over-looked component in ensuring a successful program.
Surveying by Drone from a Moving Vehicle
Included in the FAA's new drone laws is the ability to operate a drone from within a moving vehicle. This dramatically expands the areas that drones can cover for mapping or inspection. We took to the deserts of Southern California to see how difficult it is to run a safe UAV operation from a moving vehicle.