Faces of the Diversion: Anthony Herman

Anthony Herman: [00:00:14] I’m Anthony Herman, I’m the Drone program manager at ASN Constructors under our survey group. I’ve been flying airplanes and building remote control airplanes, cars, and even boats since I was a kid. As I went through schooling realized engineering was where my focus would be, so I ended up going to NDSU and graduated with a civil engineering degree from there and went right into the engineering world.

[00:00:40] Around that time is when drones started to become commercially viable. The main reason for that is because we were able to suddenly pair GPS with them, and when the drone knows where it is and is able to do some autonomous flights, it becomes a very useful survey tool.

[00:00:59] Since my role was in engineering and I was doing a lot of RC work, it was a very opportune moment to see how I can use this in my work life as well. And from there it was just a matter of exploration and figuring out okay how can this work, where can it work, where doesn’t it work. At the time I was at KLJ and they allowed me to start using a drone and testing it out for work purposes. That was right around the time that Part 107 came out. I was one of the first in line to get my license and right off the bat we were starting to use the drone for survey or just general marketing purposes.

[00:01:34] As that position developed I realized that I really love drones, and around that same time is when this project came up and this was the perfect opportunity to really hone in on that drone skill and develop it and make it useful for our community.

[00:01:52] An average day or week for our team is generally go out and figure out what area we need to survey. For us it’s most of the time a full reach—a reach is a portion of our project. Once we define those boundaries, then we will go out and set up our flight plan and our ground control layout. That ground control is really what brings the accuracy that we’re looking for, along with some of the hardware and software that we’re using.

[00:02:18] Once we have that laid out and our flight plan set, we are able to generally collect an entire reach within a couple of hours. That drone specifically… this one… will grab anywhere between two to 3,000 pictures of the site.

[00:02:32] We then will come back into the office and take those pictures, put them on our computer, and we’ll either process them locally on our massive computer or we’ll upload them to a cloud processing software called Propeller. Propeller is handy because we can generally fly all day, come in in the evening, upload the pictures, and they process it overnight, and then we come in in the morning and have some data to work with.

[00:03:00] When we do process locally, that’s more of a sit and wait on the computer scenario, so we’ll run the pictures through and then mark our targets on the model and then we’re able to create a point cloud from that and then the further deliverables.

[00:03:19] Once we’re able to send that information or publish it out to the end user, they use it for all sorts of different things, whether it’s cost controls, whether it’s business decisions, management decisions… trying to figure out do we need to build a berm here, do we need to build it larger, do we expect this area to flood if we get a large rain? All of those are the types of questions that we’re asking of our drone data specifically.

[00:03:44] The intersection of my skill set and my love for this type of work and the ability to see the impact that it will have on this community just produces a great sense of gratitude and a purpose for my labor.