Drone Inspection for Confined Spaces increases safety, decreases downtime, and saves money.

Traditional methods of confined space inspection, such as using ropes and scaffolding to send personnel into confined spaces to check for oil and gas leaks and other hazards, are dangerous, time-consuming, and costly. Confined spaces pose some of the most precarious jobsite risks to workers, including entrapment and exposure to toxic gasses. And not only is manual confined space inspection rampant with risk—it’s also lacking in effectiveness.

Even when workers achieve access, the confined space is often too dark to allow for the necessary line of sight. Movement is limited and their ability to perform a high quality, comprehensive inspection is hindered.

Hux Safety Solutions is proud to offer drone services as part of our confined space safety capabilities. This innovative approach to confined space inspection and first response emergency situations increases safety for your personnel and staff, reduces cost, and produces high-quality data on scene.

Confined Space Inspection Drones Increase Safety

Using drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), in industrial inspections increases safety of staff and personnel by reducing (even eliminating) the need to send them into hazardous environments that risk entrapment, insufficient oxygen, and exposure to toxic gasses. Humans can often overlook critical information during manual inspections due to limited movement and line of sight. Drones expand the area of inspection due to their compact size and maneuverability, allowing for a higher quality visual inspection and situational awareness and ensuring that blind spots are thoroughly accounted for.

Hux Safety Solutions provides top of the line UAVs with remote piloting capabilities—meaning our drones can be flown anywhere from anywhere. In high risk situations, our drone technology allows for inspection without needing to send a worker anywhere near the confined area. Our drones allow for real-time remote piloting in confined spaces where GPS is not available.

Using Drones to Inspect Confined Areas is Cost-Effective

Traditional methods of industrial inspection are expensive—acquiring and assembling ropes and scaffolding, breathing devices, protective workwear, and other necessary safety gear and equipment quickly add up. Manual inspections also take much longer than drone inspections (an average of 60 days to inspect 20 tanks using traditional methods, compared to only 9 days using UAVs). The use of drones significantly decreases asset inactivity and downtime, reducing costs for every day of productivity saved.

UAVs Perform High Quality Data Collection in Real Time

In their compactness, drones can be equipped with multiple sensors to perform several different tests and report the data using images and videos. At Hux, our drones have thermal imaging technology with the ability to map out temperature and spot hidden steam leaks in total darkness, thick smoke, and other poor visibility conditions. Our drones are also equipped with air monitoring sensors that can detect air quality and find and report the location of pollution and harmful gas.

Drones also have the ability to collect automated and repeatable data, which is especially useful in tracking the condition of an asset over a period of time.

The ease and cost-effectiveness of using a drone vs a human inspector to capture this quality data also allows for more frequent inspections of confined spaces. Routine spot checks help teams build a more reliable picture of the condition of their assets and spot defects earlier, which results in further safety and cost savings down the line.

Hux is Your Confined Space Safety Solution

Using drones in place of human inspectors for confined space inspection is an innovative tool that adds immense value to a confined space safety program. Confined space inspection drones eliminate the need for human entry into hazardous environments such as boilers, manholes, tanks, and other confined spaces, expanding the area of inspection and increasing safety for personnel. Drone inspection decreases downtime and reduces cost.

Drone inspections provide increased situational awareness, real-time visual support, and enhanced safety in emergency situations such as confined space access, search and rescue, and infrastructure integrity verification. To incorporate drone inspection services into your confined space training program, contact one of our team members today.