It’s a beautiful summer day. You’ve had a few drinks in your backyard and want to have some fun. So, you break out your drone and begin to fly it around, whizzing past trees and impressing your neighbors. Big mistake. Operating an expensive piece of motorized machinery when under the influence is a bad idea. Sure, it’s probably not as dangerous as operating a car, but flying a drone while intoxicated still presents risks to property and people in the area. The Danger Even in the best of circumstances, with an experienced pilot, the use of drones has the potential to be dangerous enough to da ..read more

Aerial LiDAR and How it Benefits Various Projects Who, What, Where, When, and Why of Aerial LiDAR In the last two years, the drone industry has provided one of the sharpest hockey sticks any industry has seen. A normal electronic device may see a change once a year but drone technology changes at a much more rapid pace. With a recent push of autonomous vehicles, drone-based LiDAR has benefited greatly and in coming days will hopefully continue to see a price push and easily attainable equipment. So what is drone-based LiDAR? Through this post, I will go over the 5W’s… Who, What, Where, When, a ..read more

A drone can be used for all kinds of purposes. Some people use them as a hobby. You can take some great aerial photos with them or simply view the landscape of an area. Other drones are used for business purposes like to survey land or monitor an area. Regardless of how a drone is being used, there are specific steps that should be taken if you will be traveling with a drone. Insulate the Drone From Damage When you are packing up your drone, you want to insulate it within its packaging. This will protect it from extreme temperature fluctuations. Insulating a drone will also ensure that th ..read more

[vc_row el_class=”vc_col-lg-offset-1 vc_col-lg-10″][vc_column][vc_column_text] Sony Pictures and Lifetime Network [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=”30px”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”2/3″ css=”.vc_custom_1504513697679{padding-right: 0px !important;padding-left: 0px !important;}”][vc_video video_image=”45116″ video_link=”https://vimeo.com/253180976″][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″ css=”.vc_custom_1504513702075{padding-right: 0px !important;padding-left: 0px !important;}”][vc_column_text] 01 Premiere Footage Faith under Fire This video shows the aerial ..read more

So we arrive on set for day three. As to be expected the atmosphere is running high and full of energy. Day three ended up being the worst day out of all three as we didn’t end up getting any footage at all. If you recall from day to the heavens above opened up and emptied all of the raindrops of North America upon us. Once I got home and was able to dry the equipment out, I determined that all of the equipment was ruined. A quick conversation with the producer and he agreed to replace the equipment as it was not our fault and that put me into overdrive to get a new drone kit on my doorstep fo ..read more

Date two on the video shoot was rather interesting. I learned a ton and also realize that I need to go with my gut more so than ignoring it. While day one was a bit hectic once we stepped foot on the production shoot for day two all those concerns when away.  I’ll go ahead and jump right into the items that I learned and hopefully you’ll learn something as well. Extra Clothing Typical Pittsburgh fashion we ran into a major issue with weather. I quickly realized not having a second set of clothes was a major issue, especially since it was an hour drive from the shoot to my house. We were just f ..read more

We were recently provided with an opportunity to step foot on a movie production here in Pittsburgh, one of our first. While not at first obvious, my anxiety and stress were through the roof. My elevated blood pressure was entirely based on the fact that it was the first time that we were going to run our drone for an actual movie.  I thought it might be educational and fun to go through some of the items that we learned while on set. I hope this will be beneficial for some. My intention is to only share information and leave out any type of graphics with these blog post. Insurance Coverages S ..read more

Okay so let’s talk about drone insurance. One of the first insurances that we picked up was hull and general liability insurance. While this is fantastic to have, it’s far from the only type of insurance that you need to carry. Depending on the kind of work that you were doing will also depend on the type of insurance that you need to carry.  Now of course what we talk about will depend on the kind of business structure you have and the kind of footage you are shooting. Also, full disclaimer we are not insurance providers,  nor should you take what we talk about as the role. You should reach o ..read more

At AerdiA we recently purchased a thermal camera to be outfitted on one of our commercial drones. Now you may ask how can this benefit you? Below we will go through the various areas and how they are best utilizing thermal imagery, also known as thermography. Embed from Getty Images A simple Google search defines thermography as the following: ther·mog·ra·phy THərˈmäɡrəfē/ noun – the use of thermograms to study heat distribution in structures or regions. But let’s dissect that slightly and determine exactly how best to incorporate thermal imagery into your projects to best give you t ..read more

Photogrammetry is defined as the science of making measurements from photographs, and the output is usually a map, a 3D model or drawing of real world objects or land masses. UAV photogrammetry is the use of UAVs to create these 3D images, and they can be used to collect accurate data from various areas. As the UAV flies along the way point, which is an autonomously programmed flight path, there are multiple overlapping photos of the model or ground that are taken. These pictures are then geometrically corrected into a true scale and adjusted so that they adhere to a standard geographic coordi ..read more