Estimate how many inspection missions a drone team can complete during an operating day. The calculation combines fleet size, mission and turnaround time, scheduled hours, and realistic utilization so planners can compare demand with available capacity.
Completed missions are shown as whole tasks. The unrounded capacity is retained for planning context.
Capacity is the maximum sustainable daily mission count under the entered timing assumptions. A positive target gap indicates spare capacity; a negative gap indicates more aircraft, longer hours, or shorter cycles are needed.
Weather, airspace restrictions, charging constraints, pilot availability, and simultaneous launch limits are not modeled.
With 4 drones, an 8-hour window, 80% utilization, and a 50-minute cycle, capacity is 30 whole inspections per day (4 × 480 × 0.80 ÷ 50 = 30.72).
Yes, unless batteries are swapped and charged outside the active drone cycle.
A partially completed inspection is not a finished task, so daily capacity uses whole missions.
Lower operational utilization to reflect the share of scheduled time normally lost to weather.
Yes, but count that coordinated flight as one task if it produces one completed inspection.
No. The target is used only to show the gap between available capacity and planned demand.
| Input | Role in the estimate |
|---|---|
| Available drones | Aircraft ready for assignment. |
| Average inspection time | Airborne and on-site time per mission. |
| Turnaround time | Battery swap, upload, and preparation. |
| Operating window | Scheduled daily operating time. |
| Operational utilization | Share of scheduled time that can be used. |