Air Inspection Automation (AiA)
6/10Our productWindows software that plans drone inspection missions for electric power line towers from LiDAR scans. It finds towers, places photo stops, checks clearance, and exports DJI flights.
Disclosure: b stack radar is run by the maker of Air Inspection Automation (AiA). We score it with the same criteria and sources as every other tool. How we rank tools
Data last updated November 2026 · Our methodology
Overview
Air Inspection Automation, or AiA, is Windows desktop software that plans drone inspection missions for electric power line towers. It starts from LiDAR point clouds of a line corridor in LAS or LAZ format. It separates ground from structures, finds the towers automatically, and merges towers that span two scan files. Vegetation classes can be left out, the coordinate system is read from the file header, and the original files are copied rather than changed. From the detected towers you pick the ones to inspect. AiA orders them by the shortest route, works out how many battery flights the route needs, and places launch and pickup sites, each checked for a clear climb. Photo stops come from templates for each tower design and are applied to every matching tower. In a 3D editor you can move, mirror, and adjust stops by distance, yaw, and gimbal pitch, and preview what the camera will see. Before anything is exported, every stop, site, and path segment is checked for clearance, 3 metres by default, along with climb and descent, line of sight to the target, and camera angle limits. AiA then plans a collision-free path for each flight, retries legs that fail, and gives distance, duration, and battery estimates. Missions are exported as DJI Terra KML or DJI Cloud API KMZ files, one per battery flight, with a printable driver sheet of launch and landing points. Supported drones include the DJI M350 RTK, M300 RTK, M30, Mavic 3 Enterprise, Matrice 3D, and Matrice 4 series. Crews can replay a mission in 3D from the drone camera or a chase view at 0.25 to 32 times speed. After the flight, photos are matched to stops by GPS position, time, and sequence, a feature still marked beta, and filed in a tower library that keeps each tower's stops and photo history for repeat inspections. Projects store their own OpenStreetMap data, Sentinel-2 imagery, roads, and Copernicus terrain, so planning works offline, and missions and towers can be moved between computers as portable files. AiA is built and maintained in Linköping, Sweden. It runs on Windows 10 and 11, from the Microsoft Store or as an installer for offline sites, in English with machine-translated Hungarian, Swedish, German, French, and Spanish. Licensing uses an online account with an emailed sign-in code or a signed offline licence, and the first month on one computer is free.
Our Rating
Who Air Inspection Automation (AiA) is best for
Good fit
It turns a corridor's LiDAR scans into DJI missions split into battery flights with a printable driver sheet, which is the daily work of a drone inspection contractor.
It is built for electric utilities and grid operators that inspect transmission and distribution towers with DJI enterprise drones.
A single Windows computer and a one-month free trial without a card make it easy for a small inspection company to start.
Less suited
Surveying and engineering firms that already capture LiDAR of power corridors can reuse those scans to plan inspection flights.
Offline maps, driver sheets with launch and landing points, and portable mission files support crews working away from the office.
It covers electric towers only, so it suits energy companies that own transmission lines but not generation sites, pipelines, or other assets.
The tower library keeps photo history for repeat inspections, but there are no work orders or maintenance scheduling.
Licences are per computer on Windows, and there are no team accounts, single sign-on, or integrations with enterprise asset systems.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Finds towers in LAS and LAZ scans of a whole line automatically, including towers split across two files.
- Checks every photo stop, launch site, and path segment for clearance, climb, line of sight, and camera limits before export, then plans a collision-free path.
- Splits a route into battery-sized flights with launch and pickup sites and estimates of distance, duration, and battery use.
- Photo stop templates per tower design, editable in a 3D tower editor, make repeat inspections consistent.
- Works offline, with maps, imagery, roads, and terrain stored in each project, and an offline licence for computers without internet.
- Support comes directly from the team that builds the software.
Cons
- Exports only for DJI enterprise drones, through DJI Terra KML or DJI Cloud API KMZ files.
- Runs only on Windows 10 and 11.
- Prices are not published; the website offers a free trial and contact by email.
- Built for electric towers, so it does not plan inspections of other asset types.
- Matching photos to stops after the flight is still marked as beta.
- There are no team accounts, work orders, or integrations with asset management systems.
Key Features
Not included
- Condition Monitoring
- Digital Twin
- Engineering Design
- Document Control
- Engineering Simulation
- Offline Field App
- Predictive Maintenance
- Preventive Maintenance
- Safety and Compliance
- SCADA and IoT Integration
- Spare Parts Inventory
- Work Orders
Frequently Asked Questions
LiDAR point clouds of the power line corridor in LAS or LAZ format. It reads the coordinate system from the file header, or you set any EPSG system manually.
DJI enterprise drones and Zenmuse payloads, including the M350 RTK, M300 RTK, M30, Mavic 3 Enterprise, Matrice 3D, and Matrice 4 series. Missions are exported as DJI Terra KML or DJI Cloud API KMZ files, one per battery flight.
Each photo stop, launch site, and path segment is checked against the point cloud for clearance, 3 metres by default, along with climb and descent, line of sight to the target, and camera angle limits. A collision-free path is then planned for each flight, and you can replay it in 3D before the crew leaves.
Yes. Each project stores its own maps, imagery, roads, and terrain, and a signed offline licence is available for computers that never go online.
Prices are not published on the website. There is a one-month free trial on one computer with no card required, and pricing is available by email.
Photos are matched to their stops by GPS position, time, and sequence, a feature marked as beta, and filed in the tower library so later inspections can compare against them.
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