On August 6, 2020, Kansai Electric Power (KEPCO, Headquarters: Osaka Prefecture) announced that it has developed a drone that can be used to inspect the interiors of chimneys installed at thermal power plants.

Traditionally, workers had to set up a scaffold inside the chimney to inspect the interior to identify any deterioration. This work posed some significant risks for worker safety because the height of chimneys installed at thermal power plants can reach approximately 200m.

The use of drones was previously considered to be too difficult since Global Positioning System (GPS) is not available inside the chimney. However, the drone developed by KEPCO is equipped with Visual Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM), a mapping technology that can determine the position and orientation of the drone, as well as LiDAR, a method for measuring distances, in order to enable autonomous drone operation without GPS. It is the first time that Japan has developed a drone technology that can determine the position of a drone in a cylindrical space where GPS is not available.

In addition to improving worker safety, the drone is expected to reduce the time necessary to conduct inspections by approximately 90% and the inspection costs by more than 50%.

KEPCO partnered with Kanso (Headquarters: Osaka), a civil engineering consulting company, and Autonomous Control Systems Laboratory (Headquarters: Tokyo), an autonomous control solutions company, to consider marketing the drone to utilities and local governments.[1] [2]

[1] https://www.kepco.co.jp/corporate/pr/2020/0806_1j.html

[2] https://www.kepco.co.jp/corporate/pr/2020/pdf/0806_1j_01.pdf