New3D flight playback, tower library and offline maps

Mission planning for electric tower inspection

Air Inspection Automation

A research-driven mission planning tool for electric tower inspection. Based in Sweden, AiA turns LiDAR scans of a whole power line corridor into safety-checked, DJI-ready flight missions, split into battery flights between the places your crew can park.

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  • Multi-file LAS / LAZ projects
  • DJI KML / KMZ export
  • Works offline in the field
Planned inspection flight around two power towers detected in a LiDAR point cloud
Safety: 214 of 214 checked, no issues

How it works

A simple mission planning workflow

Our commercial desktop tool takes you from a raw corridor scan to flown, reviewed inspections in six steps, the same pages you see in the app's sidebar. We provide continuous technical support and fast response to customer needs.

Workflow

Projects

Start a project from one or more LAS/LAZ files. AiA copies them in, so your originals are never changed.

Projects

Each project keeps copies of its LAS files, so the originals are never changed.

New projectOpen Open folder Delete
ProjectLAS filesMissionsPlansDiskLast edited
Riverside Corridor3214.8 GBToday 09:42
North Ridge 220 kV74312.1 GB2026-10-02
Substation feeders2101.3 GB2026-09-18
Coastal 132 kV survey5338.6 GB2026-08-30

Double-click a project to open it on LAS Processing.

Step 1 of 6: Create

What's new

Built for the whole inspection, not only the flight path

AiA now covers the full job: whole-corridor projects, battery flights between real parking spots, safety checks on every point, a tower library that carries your work to the next scan, and a 3D replay of the flight with the photos it brings back.

Battery flights

Split a long corridor into flights your crew can actually fly

A launch and pickup pair is where the car parks, and each pair is one battery flight. AiA orders the towers along the shortest route, recommends a battery-safe number of flights from your reserve, speed and hover settings, and places a pair beside each flight's first and last tower.

Drag a pair onto the car park where the crew swaps batteries. Ground heights come from the scan, or from the terrain model when a site sits off the scanned area.

  • Optimize the tower order, or keep your own
  • Distance, duration and battery estimate for every flight
  • Sites checked for a clear climb: Clear, Warning or Blocked
  • A printable driver sheet with each site's coordinates and map links
Nine towers along a power line, flown as two battery flights: flight 1 from launch L1 over towers 1 to 5 to pickup P1 at a car park, flight 2 from launch L2 at the same car park over towers 6 to 9 to pickup P2.123456789L1P1L2P2Flight 1Flight 2Battery swap at the car park

Flight 1 · L1 → P1 · towers 1-5 · ~2.6 km · ~16 min

~34 % left · reserve 20 %

Flight 2 · L2 → P2 · towers 6-9 · ~2.1 km · ~13 min

~41 % left · reserve 20 %

Optimize orderReplace sites2 flights (recommended)Order and split

Safety checks

Every inspection point checked before planning starts

Each action point is checked for clearance, a clear vertical corridor to climb and land, an unobstructed view of its photo point and a camera aim the gimbal can reach. Launch and pickup sites are checked for a clear climb to takeoff height.

The tower and mission editors mark every POI and path segment green, red or grey. Double-click a violation and the camera flies to it.

  • Configurable safety distance, 3 m by default
  • No flying under overhead structure unless you allow it
  • Planning refuses to start on an unsafe point and names it
  • F5 rechecks only what changed since the last check
A lattice tower with two inspection points: one passing its clearance, descent, view and camera aim checks, and one whose descent is blocked by the crossarm below it.1234!
  1. 1Clearance. No structure within the safety distance, 3 m by default.
  2. 2Escape and descent. A clear vertical corridor to climb out and land.
  3. 3View. Nothing between the drone and its photo point.
  4. 4Camera aim. Gimbal pitch and yaw inside the aircraft's limits.

Safety violations

Violations (1) · All 214 item(s) checked

1. No clear descent: T7 - Action point 3

Blocked descentT7 - Action point 3

No clear vertical corridor below the point

Obstacle about 1.8 m below within 3.00 m

The drone cannot climb to or auto-land from this point: structure is directly beneath it within the 3.00 m safety radius.

Templates and tower library

Inspect a tower once, reuse it on every new scan

Templates store a tower design's photo stops and fit them to every tower of that design. The tower library keeps real towers: one physical tower each, identified by its position, with its exact inspection points.

Next year, load the towers into the new scan's project. AiA aligns each tower to the new points, carries its photo stops across, and records the scan as another LAS version beside the photos of earlier flights.

  • Fit photo stops to every tower of a design by shape matching
  • Library towers align to a new scan, photo stops included
  • Compare scans of the same tower side by side in 3D
  • Share towers with their history as .toz files
Tower details
Name
Riverside Corridor 12
Folder
Riverside 132 kV
Height · POI pairs
38.4 m · 12 pairs
Photo history
24 photos, last 2026-09-12

LAS history

v1riverside_2025.laz2025-06-11
v2riverside_2026.laz2026-06-03

Bold: the version the inspection points were last saved on.

Load into missionOpen in 3DExport (.toz)...
Templates
  • 35 m portal suspension tower template with its photo stops

    35 m portal suspension

  • 26 m double-circuit tower template with its photo stops

    26 m double-circuit

  • 26 m angle tension tower template with its photo stops

    26 m angle tension

  • 40 m double-circuit tension tower template with its photo stops

    40 m double-circuit tension

3D playback and photo review

Fly the mission on screen before you fly it in the field

Mission Execution replays the plan in 3D from the drone's own camera, with a chase view beside it. Scrub through the flight, jump tower by tower or photo by photo, and play anywhere from 0.25x to 32x. Every shot is captured the way the camera will frame it.

After the real flight, load the drone's photos. AiA matches each one to its inspection point by GPS, time and sequence, and files it into the tower's photo history in the library.

Matched Ambiguous UnmatchedPhoto association is in beta.

The drone camera's view of a crossarm and insulator string during playback
Chase view behind the drone along the planned path around a tower
Chase
0.25x1x4x32x29:54 total

Shots (14)

  • Photo 9

  • Photo 10

  • Photo 11

  • Photo 12

  • Photo 13

  • Photo 14

Riverside Corridor Inspection · 2 flights · 48 photos

Features

What AiA provides for inspection teams

Everything runs on your Windows computer: point clouds, missions and photos never leave it.

Detection

Towers found across the whole corridor

Load every LAS/LAZ file of a line into one project. Ground filtering, voxel grids and clustering run on several files at once, split towers are merged, and vegetation classes can be left out. No manual marking required.

Input
LAS, LAZ
Files
Many per project
Manual marking
Not required
Inspection points

Photo stops from templates

Fit saved tower layouts to every tower of a design by shape matching, mirror pairs across a tower, and fine-tune each action and photo point in the 3D tower editor with undo and redo.

Fitting
Shape matching
Each stop
Action + photo POI
Editing
3D, undo and redo
Path planning

Near-optimal, collision-free paths

RRT* plans each battery flight from above its launch, through its towers, to above its pickup. Retry only the legs that failed, drop waypoints that are not needed, and edit any waypoint by hand.

Planner
RRT*, per flight
Min. safe distance
3 m by default
Missions
Multi-tower, multi-flight
Export

DJI-ready KML/KMZ and a driver sheet

Check a summary of every setting, then write DJI Terra KML or DJI Cloud API KMZ. Plans with several flights become one file per flight, and the KML/KMZ Validator compares two exports tag by tag.

DJI Terra
KML
DJI Cloud API
KMZ / WPML
Altitude
EGM96, WGS84, AGL
Maps

Maps that keep working in the field

Each project downloads its own street map, satellite imagery, roads and terrain once, so the maps and off-scan ground heights work with no connection. Google Maps layers are optional, with your own key.

Street map
OpenStreetMap
Imagery
Sentinel-2
Terrain
Copernicus DEM
Sharing

Plans and towers that travel

Mission files carry a planned mission to another computer without its LAS files. Tower library files carry towers with their scan versions and photo history, and merge into the receiver's library.

Mission files
.miz
Tower library
.toz
Validator reports
TXT, HTML, JSON

Continuous technical support

We provide continuous technical support with fast reaction to operational and customer needs to avoid blocking inspection timelines. Moreover, new features and improvements are implemented upon customer request.

Contact us

Specifications

Technical specifications

Supported features with compatibility and configuration options.

Supported file formats

Input: LAS, LAZ, several files per project

Output: KML (DJI Terra), KMZ/WPML (DJI Cloud API), a zip with one file per battery flight

Also: driver sheet, mission files (.miz), tower library files (.toz)

Coordinate systems

Read from the LAS headers (any EPSG system, such as SWEREF 99, UTM or EOV), or picked by hand

LAS heights: ellipsoidal (WGS84) or mean sea level (EGM96)

Altitude modes

EGM96 (above sea level), WGS84 (ellipsoidal), relative to ground (AGL)

Supported drones

DJI M350 RTK, M300 RTK, M30/M30T, Mavic 3E/3T/3M, Matrice 3D/3TD, Matrice 4E/4T/4D/4TD

Payloads: Zenmuse H20, H20T, H20N, H30, H30T and the drones' built-in cameras

Safety parameters

Configurable safe distance (default 3 m), flying under obstacles off by default

Battery reserve, maximum flight distance and hover time per inspection

Maps and terrain

OpenStreetMap, Sentinel-2 imagery and roads stored per project for offline use

Copernicus terrain model; Google Maps and Google Elevation optional with your own key

Platform and languages

Windows 10 and 11 desktop, from the Microsoft Store or as an installer for offline sites

English, with machine-translated Hungarian, Swedish, German, French and Spanish

Licensing

Online account with an emailed sign-in code, or a signed offline license for computers without internet

One-month free trial on one computer

Full list of features
  • Multi-file LAS/LAZ projects with parallel processing and automatic tower detection
  • Template-based photo stops for arbitrary tower designs, edited in 3D
  • Tower order, battery flights and launch and pickup sites decided in Mission Builder
  • Safety checks on every inspection point and site before planning starts
  • Near-optimal RRT* path planning with safety-distance compliance for every flight
  • DJI-compatible KML and KMZ export, one file per flight, with a driver sheet
  • 3D mission playback from the drone camera, and flight photo matching (beta)
  • Tower library that carries towers and their photo history to new scans
  • Offline maps, roads and terrain stored with each project
  • Continuous technical support with fast reaction to customer and operational needs

About

Air Inspection Automation

Air Inspection Automation is a research-driven software initiative focused on safe and practical mission planning specialized for electric tower inspection. The product is built and maintained in Linköping, Sweden.

Our technology stack and algorithmic choices are aligned with state-of-the-art research in motion and mission planning. We focus on translating advanced methods into a reliable workflow for real operators who need safe, efficient, and repeatable inspection missions.

AiA is a commercialized tool specifically for electric tower inspection, not yet positioned as enterprise software. Current capabilities include multi-file LiDAR projects with automatic tower detection, template-based inspection points, battery flights between launch and pickup sites, safety checks on every inspection point, near-optimal route generation with safety-distance constraints, DJI-compatible KML and KMZ mission export, 3D mission playback with flight photo matching, and a tower library that carries inspection points to new scans. We also provide continuous technical support and react quickly to customer needs as field requirements evolve and new features are requested.

Basic information
Base of operations
Linköping, Sweden
Focus area
LiDAR-driven electric tower inspection mission planning
Email
hello@airinspectionautomation.com
LinkedIn
Dominik Frey

Contact

Get in touch with us

Discuss your air inspection workflow and mission planning requirements.

Email us

Or write to hello@airinspectionautomation.com