User guide

Everything you can do in Sentinel.

A complete tour of the platform — 44 operations across 6 areas, from planning a drone flight to closing the work order it produced. Pick an area below to jump in.

The big picture

How an inspection flows.

Every operation in this guide fits into one of six stages. This is the loop a survey travels from takeoff to repair.

  1. 01

    Plan

    Lay out autonomous drone flights with safety-validated waypoints.

  2. 02

    Capture

    Fly the mission and capture thousands of visual + thermal images.

  3. 03

    Detect

    YOLO26 and Grounding DINO auto-annotate defects on upload.

  4. 04

    Review

    Approve, reject, or refine AI findings in the image annotator.

  5. 05

    Dispatch

    Approved findings spawn work orders that auto-route to teams.

  6. 06

    Analyze

    Explore GIS layers, LIDAR, and 3D reconstructions on the map.

Before you start

Who can do what.

Sentinel enforces role-based access at the endpoint level. The actions you see throughout the product depend on the role you hold. Each operation below lists the roles it requires.

  • Administrator

    Full control of the platform — manages users and access, projects, accounts, teams, and all configuration. Can do everything Operators and Reviewers can, plus administration.

  • Operator

    Runs field operations — plans and carries out data-capture sessions and uploads the captured imagery for processing.

  • Reviewer

    Reviews and approves AI-detected findings, edits annotations, and turns approved results into work orders.

  • Member

    Baseline access — signs in and views the surveys and data they are permitted to see.

Platform

Platform

The basics every user touches — signing in, finding things, and getting AI help.

  • Sign in & accounts

    JWT-based login, signup, and automatic token refresh keep your session alive securely.

    How Enter your email and password on the login screen. Sessions refresh in the background — no need to re-authenticate constantly.

    All
  • Role-based access

    Role-based access with endpoint-level enforcement decides exactly what each user can see and do.

    How Your visible actions adapt to your role automatically. See the Roles reference above for what each grants.

    All
  • Request a role upgrade

    Ask for elevated permissions through a built-in approval workflow.

    How Submit a role request from your profile; an administrator approves or rejects it.

    All Administrator approves
  • Manage users

    Create, edit, and remove users, and assign their roles and projects.

    How Open Admin → Users to invite people and scope them to the right projects.

    Administrator
  • Dark / light theme

    CSS-variable theming switches the entire interface between dark and light.

    How Toggle the theme from the top bar; your choice persists across sessions.

    All
  • Command palette

    Jump to any survey, asset, or page from a single keyboard-driven search.

    How Press Cmd+K (Ctrl+K on Windows) and start typing.

    All
  • Notifications

    A bell shows polling-based alerts for approvals, SLA breaches, and mission events.

    How Click the bell in the top bar to review recent activity.

    All
  • Chat assistant

    An LLM assistant answers questions by querying your real database through tool calling.

    How Open the chat panel and ask in plain language, e.g. “How many work orders are overdue?”

    All
  • AI insights

    A proactive dashboard surfaces what needs attention across your program.

    How Check the Insights panel for AI-prioritized items to act on.

    Administrator

Surveys

Survey Management

Organize inspections, upload imagery, and drive the AI review loop.

  • Create & manage surveys

    Full create / list / update with user-scoped access so people only see their work.

    How From Surveys, click New Survey, then add assets and inspection scope.

    All (scoped)
  • Upload images

    Upload a single image or a ZIP archive; AI auto-detection kicks off on arrival.

    How Drag a file or ZIP into a survey. Files store to object storage and detection is queued automatically.

    Operator Administrator
  • Browse survey images

    Paginated image listing with an X-Total-Count header for fast navigation of large sets.

    How Open a survey’s image grid and page through; counts are accurate even for thousands of images.

    All auth
  • Review images

    Approve or reject findings per image and per asset to control what becomes work.

    How In the annotator, use the review toolbar to bulk approve/reject or judge each annotation.

    Reviewer Administrator
  • Re-run AI detection

    Re-run detection on a single image or every pending image for an asset.

    How Use “Re-run AI” on an image, or run it across an asset to clear and regenerate annotations.

    Administrator
  • Backfill work orders

    Create any missing work orders for already-approved images in a survey.

    How Run Backfill on a survey to catch up tickets that were never generated.

    Administrator
  • AI auto-detection

    YOLO26 and Grounding DINO detect defects (broken insulators, corrosion, missing hardware) on upload.

    How Detection runs on every upload; thermal and visual images route to the matching model.

    Administrator
  • Generate LLM reports

    Produce PDF reports with AI analysis and repair recommendations.

    How Choose Generate Report on a survey or asset; configure DPI and issue count, then download.

    All auth
  • Attach documents

    Upload and preview SOP and scope-of-work files alongside the survey.

    How Use the Documents tab to upload SOP / Scope files for the field team.

    Administrator

Work Orders

Work Orders

Turn approved defects into trackable maintenance tasks, from creation to closure.

  • Create & manage work orders

    Full CRUD with role scoping — created from AI detections or manually by inspectors.

    How AI-approved images create tickets automatically, or click New Work Order to add one.

    Administrator Reviewer
  • Status lifecycle

    Seven states from PENDING_APPROVAL through OPEN, ASSIGNED, IN_PROGRESS, ON_HOLD, COMPLETED to CLOSED.

    How Move a ticket through its lifecycle from its detail page; completed orders can be reopened.

    Role-dependent
  • Approve AI work orders

    AI-created tickets start as PENDING_APPROVAL and require an administrator sign-off.

    How Review the pending queue and Approve to release tickets for assignment.

    Administrator
  • Auto-assignment

    Routes to the specialist team for the defect, then a regional team, then any active team.

    How Happens automatically on approval — no action needed; falls back gracefully if no match.

    System
  • Dashboard

    Metrics by status and priority, recent activity, and overdue counts — all user-scoped.

    How Open Work Orders → Dashboard for a live breakdown of your program.

    Administrator Reviewer
  • SLA management

    Due dates from priority, overdue tracking, and warning/breach notifications.

    How SLAs are computed per account; a background task notifies assignees every 15 minutes.

    Administrator
  • Completion photo

    Require a verification photo when a work order is marked complete.

    How Upload the completion photo from the ticket before closing it out.

    Assigned users
  • Bulk assign

    Assign many work orders to a team or user in one action.

    How Select multiple tickets in the list and choose Bulk Assign.

    Administrator

Drone Ops

Drone Operations

Plan, fly, and monitor missions — manual control or fully autonomous AI inspection.

  • Flight planning

    Build plans with CIRCULAR or GRID patterns, configurable altitude, speed, gimbal pitch, and hover time.

    How Create a plan, target a survey/asset, and let waypoints generate from asset locations with battery estimates.

    All auth
  • Flight execution

    Start async background execution with a generated WebSocket URL for live telemetry.

    How Click Execute on a plan; draft, approved, failed, cancelled, or completed plans can be re-run.

    All auth
  • Agent missions

    Autonomous inspection using a two-loop architecture: obstacle avoidance plus GPT-4o vision decisions.

    How Launch in simulation or live mode; pause, resume, or emergency-abort at any time.

    Administrator Operator
  • Recurring missions

    Schedule missions to repeat on a cron expression, e.g. every Monday at 08:00.

    How Set a cron schedule (like 0 8 * * MON) when creating an agent mission.

    Administrator Operator
  • Live video streaming

    Watch a live MJPEG feed and pull the latest frame or captured images from a flight.

    How Open the flight’s video panel during execution to monitor the stream.

    All auth
  • Real-time telemetry

    Stream position, velocity, attitude, battery, GPS, and flight mode over WebSocket.

    How Telemetry appears live on the mission view while the drone is airborne.

    All auth
  • Safety validation

    Every waypoint is checked against no-fly zones before and during a flight.

    How Runs automatically at plan creation and execution; surfaces warnings without blocking.

    System

Geospatial

Geospatial

GIS layers, LIDAR point clouds, no-fly zones, and 3D reconstruction on a unified map.

  • Unified map

    Assets, GIS layers, and no-fly-zone overlays on a satellite or OpenStreetMap base.

    How Open the Map tab; toggle the base layer and overlays, and it auto-pans to your data.

    Administrator Operator
  • GIS layers

    Upload KML, GeoJSON, or Shapefiles as CORRIDOR, DEM, VEGETATION, or CUSTOM layers.

    How Upload from the GIS Layers tab to preview boundaries and enrich assets with elevation.

    Write: Administrator Read: All
  • LIDAR viewer

    Render LAS/LAZ point clouds in an interactive Three.js 3D viewer.

    How Upload a point cloud, then orbit, measure distance/area/volume, and split-compare datasets.

    Read: All Delete: Administrator
  • Elevation profiles

    Extract LIDAR-derived elevation along any polyline you draw.

    How Draw a line on the LIDAR viewer to get an SVG elevation chart.

    All
  • 3D reconstruction

    Photogrammetry via NodeODM produces orthophotos, point clouds, DSMs, and textured meshes.

    How Upload aerial photos in the 3D Reconstruction tab; a task polls NodeODM until outputs are ready.

    Read: All Delete: Administrator
  • Orthophoto overlay

    Serve GeoTIFF orthophotos as map tiles layered on Leaflet.

    How Once a reconstruction completes, enable its orthophoto overlay on the map.

    All
  • No-fly zones

    Color-coded airspace overlay with FAA / AirMap sync across Class B/C/D, restricted, prohibited, MOA, and TFR types.

    How Manage zones from the NFZ page; sync external restrictions or add custom zones.

    Write: Administrator Read: All
  • Corridor analysis

    Buffer zone corridors to detect vegetation encroachment, plus proximity and terrain-risk analytics.

    How Run corridor encroachment, asset-proximity, or terrain-risk analytics from the GIS tools.

    Administrator

Admin

Admin & Settings

Configure detection, organize teams, and audit everything that happens.

  • AI settings

    Choose the detection provider, set confidence thresholds, and manage API keys.

    How Open Settings → AI to pick YOLO26 or Grounding DINO and tune confidence.

    All
  • Team management

    Create specialist teams (by defect type) and regional teams for auto-assignment.

    How In Admin → Teams, define specialist and regional teams that work orders route to.

    Administrator
  • Audit log

    Track user actions across the platform for accountability and review.

    How Open Admin → Audit Log to see who did what, and when.

    Administrator

Ready to run a survey?

Open the product to plan a flight, review AI findings, and dispatch your first work order.