10/21/2026
Heading to Stone Mountain, Georgia. ⛰️
Today our team at Interstate Drone Services (IDS) is on the road to Stone Mountain. Our scope of work has two parts:
1. Document the carving. We’ll capture it in a level of detail that has never been practical from the ground:
✅ A high-resolution 3D photogrammetry model built from drone imagery
✅ A LiDAR point cloud, a precise, measurable record of the surface that doesn’t depend on lighting or surface texture
Together, these give conservators a baseline for tracking the carving’s condition over time and planning future work.
2. Find out whether we can clean it with drones. This is the next part of the project, and it depends on what we learn on site. I’m bringing representatives from Lucid Bots with me to help work through whether drone-based cleaning is realistic for a structure of this size and significance.
There are no lifts on a sculpture like this. Today the options are crews working on ropes or scaffolding hung from the mountain face, and neither is ideal. If drones can do the job, it means fewer people exposed to risk at height and a faster, less intrusive way to care for a national landmark. Whether that’s feasible is exactly what we’re going to find out.
ICR has spent 35+ years in exterior restoration, including National Register landmarks like the Princeton Battlefield Colonnade, Barnegat Lighthouse and Liberty State Park . Pairing that restoration experience with drone technology is what IDS is built for.
I’ll share updates from the field over the next few days. Follow along.
www.icr-ids.com
