18-21: Visual Inspection by Drone

EDF survey the civil engineering of nuclear power plants. In addition to topographic controls, the traditional visual inspection is operated from the ground, at a long distance from the buildings, to characterize civil engineer defects: cracks, corrosions, concrete peeling... and help to define the maintenance. To improve the quality of the controls EDF is testing innovative technologies especially with drones. A visual inspection was tried on a cooling tower with a drone, equipped with a high-resolution camera, and GPS system. The photos were assembled and corrected to generate a high-quality orthophoto map of the inspected structure. The developments with R&D Department are focused on automatic detection of the defects.