Progress Energy, a major power company in the eastern United States serving 2.8 million customers, has been seeking cost-effective methods for monitoring power line corridors for 'danger trees,' encroachment, damaged structures, and inoperative insulators. In conjunction with vegetation management experts at UAP-Timberland, Inc. of Jonesboro, Arkansas, MLB sought to identify possible applications of their UAV technology to the problems faced by Progress Energy.

On November 20, 2003, an MLB Bat mini-UAV flew in windy conditions over mountainous terrain near the city of Asheville, North Carolina to test the utility of its georeferenced high-resolution digital still imagery. The operations were conducted with permission of the FAA Flight Standards District Office in Charlotte, NC.

Two hundred images were captured, covering an area of 6000 acres at a resolution of 5 inches per pixel. This imagery was immediately geocoded and converted to a standard Geographical Information System using techniques developed by MLB. With this level of processing, MLB gave a debrief to the representatives from Progress Energy and UAP-Timberland that used ArcView to show the recently captured imagery overlaid onto older USGS imagery. Based on their content, such as the powerline structure and cable shown in the accompanying image, forty-seven images were chosen for further processing. Working with image processing company Forest One, Inc. of Itasca, Illinois, MLB was able to orthorectify each image and create a large orthorectified mosaic of imagery

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For more information about MLB products and services, including the BAT mini-UAV, contact MLB at sales@spyplanes.com or (650) 966-1022.