What Sky Ladder Drones and Flyability revealed about drone technology, inspection data, and real-world ROI for critical infrastructure teams
Imagine inspecting a 50-foot-deep sewer manhole, a petroleum storage tank, or a crumbling railroad tunnel, without ever sending a single person inside.
That’s exactly what Sky Ladder Drones is doing every day, all across the country.
In our recent webinar, Sky Ladder’s Chief Revenue Officer Frank J. Segarra sat down with Taylor Wilson, Area Sales Manager at Flyability, to pull back the curtain on how confined space drone inspections actually work and why more and more asset owners and engineering firms are making the switch.
If you missed it, here’s what you need to know.
The Problem with Sending People In
Traditional confined space inspections are slow, expensive, and genuinely dangerous. Before a human inspector can set foot inside a storage tank, weeks of preparation are typically required: scaffolding construction, air quality testing, PPE sourcing, OSHA compliance checks — and that’s before any actual inspection work begins.
To put it plainly: the drone can be inside and back out again before a manual inspection crew has even finished setting up.
Beyond the time savings, the safety case is hard to argue against. Hazardous gases like hydrogen sulfide, methane, and toxic industrial vapors that could seriously harm a human inspector simply don’t affect the drone. Neither do the rusted ladder rungs, the 50-foot drops, or the collapsing soffits.
The Technology Making It Possible: The Elios 3
The Elios 3 by Flyability is the world’s first indoor mapping and inspection drone, purpose-built for this exact environment. Unlike standard commercial drones that rely on GPS for stabilization, it’s designed specifically for confined, GPS-denied spaces.
The minimum opening the Elios 3 can comfortably navigate is around 23 inches, which covers a wide range of manholes, pipes, tunnels, and access hatches.
A few things that make it stand out:
- Collision-tolerant carbon fiber cage: it can bounce off walls without crashing or causing damage
- SLAM-based lidar: creates precise 3D point clouds in GPS-denied environments
- 4K camera with high-intensity LED lighting: captures fine detail even in complete darkness
- Thermal camera: detects water intrusion, heat variations, and hidden anomalies
- Modular payload system: configurable with ultrasonic testing (UT) sensors, radiation detectors, or flammable gas sensors depending on the job
That last point is worth highlighting. The UT payload alone is helping one Flyability customer eliminate scaffolding inside their tanks entirely, saving approximately $25 million per year in setup costs.
It’s Not Just Video, It’s Engineering-Grade Data
One of the biggest misconceptions about drone inspections is that they just produce video footage. The reality is significantly more useful.
The Elios 3 and its companion software, Inspector, merge multiple data streams in real time, creating:
- 3D point cloud of the entire space that can be navigated.
- Tagged Points of Interest (POIs) — defects and anomalies pinned directly to the model
- Thermal overlays for detecting moisture and temperature variations
- UT thickness measurements tied to specific locations on the model
- Exportable file formats compatible with AutoCAD, Revit, and other engineering platforms
The result isn’t just a pretty model. It’s a structured, actionable dataset that engineering teams can use to plan remediation, satisfy regulators, and track asset condition over time.
When you’re looking for a one-inch crack in a 1,000-foot pipe, that kind of spatial precision is everything.
Where This Technology Is Being Used
The applications for this technology are broader than most people realize. Here are some of the sectors where confined space drone inspections are already being used:
- Oil & gas: internal inspection of storage tanks and pipeline systems
- Water & wastewater: sewer networks, treatment plants, stormwater infrastructure
- Transportation: bridges, tunnels, and railroad corridors
- Power generation: conventional plants and nuclear facilities
- Industrial facilities: chemical processing vessels and containment structures
- Food production: bulk material storage, including volume and tonnage measurement
The key takeaway: if it’s enclosed, hard to reach, or critical to your operation, it’s a prime candidate for a drone inspection.
The ROI Case
Sky Ladder Drones sees an average 300% return on investment for clients switching from manual to drone-based inspections.
The savings come from multiple directions: eliminated scaffolding, reduced PPE requirements, fewer specialist hours, shorter outage windows, and above all, reduced risk of injury or incident.
For most clients, the numbers speak for themselves.
Curious what this technology could do for your operation?
Every asset is different. Reach out to the Sky Ladder team and we’ll walk you through exactly what a drone-enabled inspection could deliver for yours.
