For the light drone they used in the paper they had a 5 to 10% cycle. It has no detection equipment on it. They're ultimately going to need a much heavier drone to actually do inspections. Which, if you're going to go the autonomous route, ground based charging becomes much more justifiable in terms of fixed cost.
Aside from that, they already have ground controlled attached cable "walking" drones in use by several providers and manufactured by several companies. Similarly to human inspectors you wouldn't deploy them on a windy day either and can have professionals ready and on scene in case any problems do happen.
Anyways.. the point of this paper is they've worked out the landing and release technology and can credibly claim continuous operation although with a very little flight time in between recharges. Which is great, but as an application to the inspection problem, I still maintain it's too clever by half.
This has applications, likely with custom drone only infrastructure, in which case you could do direct attachment and really speed up the charge time to something useful, but my strong guess is certainly not for autonomous inspections.
Aside from that, they already have ground controlled attached cable "walking" drones in use by several providers and manufactured by several companies. Similarly to human inspectors you wouldn't deploy them on a windy day either and can have professionals ready and on scene in case any problems do happen.
Anyways.. the point of this paper is they've worked out the landing and release technology and can credibly claim continuous operation although with a very little flight time in between recharges. Which is great, but as an application to the inspection problem, I still maintain it's too clever by half.
This has applications, likely with custom drone only infrastructure, in which case you could do direct attachment and really speed up the charge time to something useful, but my strong guess is certainly not for autonomous inspections.