CONFINED SPACE DRONE SURVEYS
Vertex Air provides expert internal inspection services for complex and hazardous assets. Our specialist drone pilots safely capture highly detailed data and 3D models. This completely eliminates the need for dangerous human entry and minimises your operational downtime.
Our Confined Space Drone Capabilities
Capture crystal clear imagery for detailed condition analysis, using a 180° field of view and powerful 16,000 lumen LED lighting systems.
Safely navigate complex, dusty environments using lidar to stabalise the drone and produce 3D point clouds from the raw lidar data.
Utilise radiometric thermal cameras to instantly identify hidden leaks, anomalies, and structural defects in completely dark environments.
Seamlessly integrate our confined space drone data into your existing CAD and BIM workflows where traditional methods can’t capture data.
Actively monitor for up to 14 explosive and toxic gases (including LEL, H2S) to map atmospheric hazards without risking human exposure.
Securely stream the drone's live feed to your engineers in a safe zone, allowing for collaborative, real time decision making on site.
A Safer and Faster Survey Solution
Traditional confined space entry requires extensive planning, specialist rescue teams, breathing apparatus, and costly operational delays, all while carrying inherent risks to human life. Vertex Air transforms this process entirely.
As a specialist commercial drone operator, our highly trained teams deploy advanced drones to survey your assets in a fraction of the time. We handle the entire data capture process to provide you with comprehensive, actionable digital records of your infrastructure, allowing for safer planning before entry and completely removing your personnel from hazardous atmospheres.
Advanced Technology: The Elios 3
To capture survey-grade data in the most challenging environments, our pilots deploy the industry-leading Flyability Elios 3. Purpose-built for internal inspections, this platform allows us to navigate complex voids safely:
Collision Resilient Cage: An omnidirectional carbon fibre cage protects your critical assets and our equipment from impacts, allowing pilots to roll the drone along internal surfaces to capture close-up data.
IP44 Ingress Protection: Built to withstand dripping water, spray, and heavy dust, ensuring our survey teams can complete your mission regardless of the internal conditions.
Market-Leading Stability: By combining advanced vision sensors with LiDAR, our pilots maintain complete control in completely dark voids and internal drafts, ensuring perfectly crisp data.
Serving High-Risk Industries
We deliver comprehensive structural assessments across multiple sectors with zero risk of human contamination or exposure to hazardous underground gases:
Civil Infrastructure & Transport: Detailed visual inspections and 3D mapping for complex railway tunnels, deep culverts, and internal highway bridge voids without disrupting live traffic.
Utilities & Water Management: Highly accurate structural assessments of deep sewer networks, clean water reservoirs, and aqueducts.
Mining & Subsurface: Safely map and assess the stability of ventilation shafts, ore passes, and abandoned underground workings in total darkness to mitigate rockfall risks.
Power Generation & Energy: Remote visual and LiDAR surveys inside industrial chimneys, boiler internals, cooling towers, and hydroelectric penstocks.
Industrial & Manufacturing: Rapid internal inspections of bulk storage tanks, pressure vessels, silos, and complex pipework networks without expensive ventilation procedures.
Tailored Solutions: Drone to Human Entry
Vertex Air takes a drone-led approach to maximise safety and drastically reduce operational downtime. However, we understand that every asset is unique. If the geometry of a confined space is not suitable for a complete drone survey, or if our initial digital data reveals the need for a tactile physical inspection, we work seamlessly alongside our sister company, Vertex Access.
By utilising their highly trained, IRATA-certified confined space entry and rope access teams, we can engineer a bespoke solution tailored exactly to your asset. Whether it is a fully remote drone survey or a hybrid approach where the drone's 3D map is used to safely plan a targeted human entry, we guarantee a safe and reliable data capture solution.
See our recent projects.
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No. Because our pilots operate the drone safely from outside the confined space, there is zero human entry required during the initial survey phase. This completely eliminates the need for standby rescue teams, breathing apparatus, and complex permit to work systems associated with physical human entry.
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The Elios 3 uses a robust wireless transmission system. While range depends heavily on the layout and materials of the asset (for example thick concrete versus steel), we utilise range extenders and specialised antenna cables that can be dropped into shafts or fed through manholes to ensure strong signal penetration deep into complex structures.
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Yes. The drone is equipped with a 16,000 lumen LED lighting array that easily illuminates pitch black environments like sewer networks and storage tanks. Furthermore, the LiDAR scanner and SLAM technology do not require ambient light to navigate or map the environment, allowing our survey teams to build precise 3D models in total darkness.
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Depending on your project requirements, we provide high definition 4K video walkthroughs, high resolution still imagery of specific defects, radiometric thermal reports, live gas monitoring data, and highly accurate 3D point clouds (LAS or LAZ formats) that can be imported directly into your CAD or BIM software.
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The exact accuracy of our indoor 3D models depends entirely on your specific project, the surrounding environment and the geometry of the asset. Because confined spaces require SLAM technology rather than GPS, accuracy can vary from site to site. We always consult with you beforehand to evaluate your asset and ensure the data we capture will meet your exact engineering requirements, whether you need general spatial awareness, volumetric calculations or specific structural measurements.
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Currently, there are no commercially available inspection drones that hold full ATEX certification due to their exposed motors and batteries. However, Vertex Air heavily mitigates this risk through strict safety protocols. We can utilise our atmospheric gas monitoring payloads to test the environment first, or work alongside your site managers to ensure the asset is fully purged and vented before our pilots commence the flight.
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A major advantage of our service is the sheer speed of deployment. While a traditional physical entry might require days of scaffolding erection, ventilation, and rescue team preparation, our specialist pilots can often complete a comprehensive drone survey in a single day or even just a few hours. This drastically reduces your operational downtime and keeps your facility running smoothly.