HD Air Studio develops custom drone gimbal stabilizers for the specific requirements of industrial aerial inspections.
VulcanUAV has leveraged HD Air Studio gimbals in various projects. Initially, these were standard, off-the shelf gimbals suitable for a number of cameras on the market. The first custom gimbal commissioned by Vulcan UAV was a front mounted two axis unit designed to carry a Teledyne FLIR gas sensing camera.
Case Study: Wind Turbine Inspection
VulcanUAV enlisted HD Air Studio to develop a custom 2-axis front-mounted gimbal stabilizer for a Canon 5D camera, designed for a bespoke drone built in-house for Perceptual Robotics’ Dhalion autonomous wind turbine inspection system.
Seeking a ready-to-use solution compatible with their API, VulcanUAV worked with HD Air Studio to ensure seamless integration with their multirotor platform.
A lightweight, rigid construction was crucial to ensuring perfect image stabilization, even with longer focal length lenses. The camera stabilizer was designed to provide unobstructed access to all units and wireways, ensuring seamless operation.
HD Air Studio ensured convenient access to HDMI and USB connectors for VulcanUAV, eliminating the need to detach the gimbal. The gimbal controller was delivered in a dedicated cover, designed to be housed inside the drone by VulcanUAV during a later stage of the project.
VulcanUAV stated, “The custom gimbal developed by HD Air Studio keeps the camera image perfectly still even with longer focal length lenses. The gimbal offers great resistance in difficult conditions – we mount it to a drone which carries out autonomous inspections of turbine blades and structures both onshore and offshore.
“The inspection system needs to maintain an image resolution of 3 pixels per millimeter without the need for the aircraft to get too near the turbine blades. At this level of resolution any movement in the camera during the shot will lead to focus issues which cannot be present if the data is to be usable for detailed inspection. The reliability of this camera stabilizer is key to our effective operations.”
