TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. — Confined spaces and deadly fumes create a toxic work environment. Workers around the globe climb into such places every day — and a few of them don’t make it back out.

A Michigan company believes it can keep some of those workers from danger by replacing them with specialized drones.

“There are a lot of opportunities,” said Christian Smith, CEO of Interactive Aerial — an aerospace company based in Traverse City which designs and makes drones for use in the chemical and oil industries. “There’s been interest in this arena, but we seem to be ahead of the competition.”

Interactive Aerial has spent the last year researching, testing and upgrading a drone specifically designed to operate inside enclosed spaces.

Workers perish every year while working in dangerous confines, either while inspecting or cleaning tanks that store or transport toxic substances.

In April 2016, the federal Occupational Health and Safety Administration fined a New Orleans tank-cleaning company for failing to follow safety rules in an incident where one worker died and two others were hospitalized after they passed out from lack of oxygen inside an oil tanker.

“It’s certainly dangerous work,” Smith told the Traverse City, Michigan Record-Eagle. “Drones have been a big revolution in the inspection field.”

The company works with 15 part-time contract workers for various design, marketing and manufacturing chores. One part-timer at Michigan Technological University builds custom circuit boards that do service inside the fuselage of the company’s Legacy One drone.

Several generations of prototypes have led to the Legacy One production design. It carries a high-resolution camera, a laser-based collision avoidance system and a bright light for both visual remote navigation and good photographic illumination. It can remain airborne for 15 minutes. And it can survey the inside of a toxic tank much more quickly than a human encased in protective gear and dangling from a rope.

Designing, building and programming the drone for its specific task is Interactive Aerial’s reason for being. But the company’s four partners — Smith, Pierce Thomas, Justin Bentsen and Chris Schmidt — know that their clients will use the machine strictly as a tool. It is the result — accurate, timely and secure information in the form of high-resolution photos — that clients seek.

“We know the drone is of limited importance to people — it’s the data,” Smith said, that matters in the end.

The companies they market the drone to are very concerned about security, which could give Interactive Aerial’s small-town American roots a sales advantage over companies from other nations. Manufacturing companies want to protect the details of their processes from any form of possible industrial spying.

“How their chemicals are made is their bread and butter,” said Smith, adding they don’t want inspection images leaking out.

The Legacy One’s primary competition for use inside confined spaces comes from a company that creates a lightweight cage to completely surround its drone. The resulting product can fly in tight spaces, Smith said, primarily because it can keep flying as it bumps into and bounces off walls or other obstructions.

“It’s a very different vehicle working toward the same goal,” he said.

Nielsen writes for the Traverse City, Michigan Record-Eagle.