Spraying Drone for Construction

In partnership with Seibu Construction, a major developer in Japan, we’ve developed a spraying drone specifically targeted at the construction industry.

Compared to previously available systems, our drone is capable of spraying much higher volume of materials at a greater distance for a longer period, allowing much larger area to be sprayed per flight. This enables Seibu Construction to cover the entire site faster, greatly reducing the operation time and cost. This is specially important in maintaining country’s aging public infrastructures such as bridges, tunnels, and dams.

With its remotely-operated, 2-axis controllable twin nozzles, our drone can spray many types of liquid and chemical solutions including concrete reinforcing/crack-sealing/anti-corrosion materials. The HD video from the spray nozzle operator’s waterproof FPV camera is fed via an industrial-grade, low-latency digital video downlink to facilitate precise spraying operation.

The accompanying mobile ground platform, which we’ve also developed in conjunction with the drone, harnesses large flight batteries, a remotely operated gas-powered pump, a 25L tank, pressure regulator, and a unified tether/hose reel with battery mounts. This greatly simplifies the handling and operation on the ground and also is very easy to transport and setup. Also the 2-mega-pascal pump enables Seibu Construction to use the drone as a flying pressure washer to clean hard-to-reach areas of tall structures such as underside of bridges and tunnel ceiling fixtures, all without putting up scaffolding.

The drone itself is waterproof, but high-voltage tether systems found in traditional drones are inherently dangerous to use in wet conditions. We’ve developed a low-voltage tethering system that is not only much safer to operate, but also integrated with the spraying system which simplifies day-to-day operations.