Dromosplan - an Innovative Platform of Autonomous UAVs for Monitoring and Inspecting Infrastructures and Industrial Sites

The present article reports the work carried out during the European RFCS project DroMoSPlan, which has investigated different aspects on the use of drones for inspection and maintenance activities in the steelmaking industry. The work was focused on three different aspects: design and development of hardware solutions; development of dedicated software; implementation of management strategies. The first aspect analysed possible improvements concerning general robustness of flying drones in harsh environments by means of the integration of sensors and protections, and the development of autonomous charging stations for long-range missions. The second aspect comprised the development of special algorithms for autonomous flight and cooperative strategies (fleet of drones), and the development of integrated systems for data acquisition and suitable human machine interface. The third aspect was developed to study in-depth the problems related to human safety aspects and social impacts of drone applications, as well as the analysis of all legal and company constraints for autonomous flying drones and training system for drone control/management for operators.