Many of us have had the experience of driving down the road at night with a construction scene off to the side and being blinded by the lighting set up for the workers. With 100,000 lumens of light stuck on a 25- or 30-foot pole, this situation not only poses a problem for the drivers but also the workers, who create a massive shadow when working with their back turned to the light while standing in front of it. For a long time, these were issues that just had to be dealt with, but with new, emerging technology the issues can be mitigated.

This is precisely the aim of Blue Vigil with their new ALED Portable Lighting product, being shown off for the first time at Commercial UAV Expo 2022 with broad availability coming in 2023. Blue Vigil CEO Robert Schumann took a few minutes of his time at the conference to talk about the new product and what it can offer not only the construction industry to illuminate their sites, but plenty of other use cases as well.

Blue Vigil's lighting product is easily transportable in a custom, rollable suitcase-like container and attached to a rugged, foam drone. Equipped with four gimbals, it produces 80,000 lumens of light and can be sent up, on a tether, up to 100 feet in the air. Once it is up in the air and the lights are on, there is a whopping 10,000 square feet of OSHA-quality lighting coverage. With this, a construction site can be fully lit from above, eliminating potentially blinding light from a tower and giving workers the ability to get their job done without having to worry about creating a massive shadow.

While construction sites are a huge use case that can benefit from this kind of product, it's certainly not the only one. Public safety situations can also be assisted by overhead lighting, with nightime crash scenes, as an example, being more easily illimunated by the highly transportable device. Schumann also calls out youth sports as a potential benefactor from this technology. Given it's relatively small size, it can be easily stored in, say, a shed near a field and connected to a generator, able to be pulled out to light up a playing field and allow night games and practices in spaces that otherwise could only host daytime activities.

While the lighting device is Blue Vigil's newest product, they are certainly not new in the drone support business with their booth also featuring their RS100 Power Tether System. Compatible with most commercial drones on the market, it helps eliminate the need for frequent battery changes and allows for unlimited hover and continuous operation of the drone's payload.

The new lighting system is certainly a compelling addition to the Blue Vigil line of products. It is the type of solution that a bevy of industries will look to utilize for easy, effective lighting to get their job done in any environment.