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Drones / Feed

Used to pick up signals from tracking gear on the ground, collect images of wildlife and habitats from the air, gather acoustic data with specialized hydrophones, or even collect snot samples from whales' blowholes, drones are capable of collecting high-resolution data quickly, noninvasively, and at relatively low cost.

discussion

Photogrammetry of Coral Reef Breakwaters

Matthew Duggan

20 December 2024 1:11am

Hello WildLabs community!I was curious if anyone had any experience or helpful insight into the following project I am working on with coral reef/land mapping interfaces in the...

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Sean Hill

22 December 2024 8:35am

Hi Matthew

 

Wow, what an amazing project! It is incredible how you have managed to figure out some of the complexities of combining underwater imagery with UAV imagery. I am sure that was a fascinating learning experience. 

I cannot help you with Points 1 and 3 but can suggest using Orfeo Toolbox for your segmentation process in Point 2. It integrates with QGIS and is open source. It will work with your UAV ortho maps if there is enough visible detail of the corals. You will be able to build and train your own model in order to accurately segment you reef. It takes a bit of know how to us the Machine Learning algorithms but once you get the hang of it it becomes immensely powerful. I will be building an online course on how to build your own machine learning processing algorithms in 2025 using this brilliant package. Once segmented you can save out the shapefiles and use them to segment and define your 3D point clouds in Agisoft.

Alternatively, look into using Picterra Geospatial AI. It is cloud based and much simpler to use but you may need to compress your imagery or point clouds in order to upload them given the file size you mentioned above.  (Although they probable do allow for large uploads these days, I used Picterra in the past and it was brilliant!). Also i am not sure if it works with point clouds directly but have a look

I hope this helps. Great project!

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discussion

Mass Detection of Wildlife Snares Using Airborne Synthetic Radar

David Gaynor

7 January 2024 6:50am

Mass Detection of Wildlife Snares Using Airborne Synthetic RadarFor the last year my colleauges Prof. Mike Inggs (Radar - Electrical Engineering, Unviversity of Cape Town) and...

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David Guerin

26 August 2024 1:14pm

 Is thisvfunding grant an opportunity? https://www.dronedeploy.com/blog/expand-your-impact-with-a-grant-from-dronedeploy

Allison Rybak

24 October 2024 1:39am

Hi David, this is an incredible project. Would you be interested in sharing more of your experience with AI and wildlife conservation with my students? They are currently researching this, and would greatly benefit from speaking with a professional in the field. Thank you for considering!

Sean McCormack

21 November 2024 4:52pm

Hats off to your team for this absolute game-changing technology! 

We rescue stray and wild animals in Taiwan, and the bulk of our work is saving animals maimed by wire snares and gin traps. We've become better at finding the devices, but still not good at all. There's simply too much difficult terrain to cover and we only have eyeballs and hiking sticks to find them. We know roughly where they are because the maimed stray dogs will eventually find their way onto a road and be reported to us. Then we close one of them, set up a trail camera, get the evidence of the poacher in the act of re-setting it, and get him prosecuted and shut down. But we need to be able to scale this greatly.

I've been using a thermal-imaging drone to locate stricken animals and am now considering buying another drone more suited to finding traps and snares. Some newer drones are able to navigate through forest without crashing into thin branches, so I've been looking into equipping one with LiDAR to see if that can detect the devices. But then I came across your YouTube channel and then this post about using airborne synthetic radar, and I'm incredibly excited to see where you might take this incredible technology.

How can we get our hands on the SAR you're using? It's 3 kg, right? I'm wondering if I could fit it to a suitable drone. If it works above forest canopy to detect traps and snares on the forest floor, then I can use a load-carrying drone instead of a light obstacle-avoidance drone.

If you made the SAR yourselves, then maybe think about crowdfunding for your project. I'd happily pledge funds if it meant I could get my hands on the kind of equipment you're using.

I can't tell you how happy I am thinking about all the animals' lives you'll save with this. Don't just remove the snares—gather evidence and put the poachers out of business too!

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discussion

Drones for GIS Best practice Document

Adrian Hughes

31 March 2020 10:42am

We've just released the latest version of our best practice document   General refresh and update based on knowledge acquired over the last couple of years...

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Steffen Döring

9 August 2024 1:09pm

Hi Nilaksha,

maybe this is interesting too 😉 My free manual 'Drones in Biomonitoring' - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8077113 can help to get (more) knowledge how to proceed easily and successfully 😉 

It covers topics from buy to fly and data processing.

📖 The manual was developed to help authorities, landscape conservation / maintenance or nature conservation associations etc. in nature conservation to manage their growing monitoring tasks more effectively and cost-efficiently.
🛸 The use of drones can contribute in many ways to increasing the effectiveness of monitoring, reducing costs and minimizing disturbance - https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Steffen-Doering.

Best regards!
Steffen

Rick Spaulding

10 November 2024 6:54am

Adrian,

Many thanks for v2.0 of the GIS best practices document. How does one obtain a copy of the RSPB code of practice B09 referenced in the best practices document? The link in the document does not work for me.

Thanks,

Rick

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Link

deadtrees.earth - An Open-Access and Interactive Database for Centimeter-Scale Aerial Imagery to Uncover Global Tree Mortality Dynamics

Elsa Carla De Grandi

2 November 2024 9:00am

deadtrees.earth is an open-access platform hosting more than a thousand centimeter-resolution orthophotos, more than 300,000 ha. Combined with Earth observation data and machine learning it will enable to uncover tree mortality patterns.

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discussion

Can wireless charging technology be used for animal sensors?

Yu Jiang

17 October 2024 7:03am

Recently I have read many papers on animal research, and I found that one of the most difficult problems is how to solve the problem of charging sensors. After all, for many small...

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Yu Jiang

23 October 2024 4:00pm

Although this technology may not be mature now, and there are still many problems to be discussed and solved, I think it will have good application prospects. 

Unfortunately, I am just an undergraduate student in China, and what I can do is very limited. Maybe in the future I can also do some similar research or what I want to do. Just like you, I am studying hard now. 

Thank you very much for this forum and the professionals who responded to me. You have allowed me to see more perspectives and many things I didn't realize. Thank you very much!

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discussion

Seeking Advice on Thermal Drones for Night-Time Elephant Observation

Nilaksha Rathnayake

25 December 2023 9:53am

Hi everyone,I'm looking for an affordable yet effective thermal drone to observe elephants at night in Sri Lanka, aiming to address human-elephant conflict. Has anyone used...

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Kim Hendrikse

9 October 2024 6:07pm

When you say lower resolution do you also mean 640x480 resolution ? The drone Lars is referring to has that. Of course is higher than the budget of the inquirer. But I curious because things are changing. I have a 1280x1024 pixel thermal at the moment. Obviously anything but cheap.

Paul Allin

14 October 2024 9:36am

@kimhendrikse  Resolution is a term that can be confusing as it is applied to both the on-ground effective resolution: GSD (Ground Sampling Distance) as well as the resolution of the sensor. Ultimately the only thing that is important is if you can get the image quality that you need to be able to answer your research/management/security question. This is a result of the sensor resolution, the focal length of the lens and the distance from the object to the sensor. When there is a need to scan large areas drones need to fly higher to optimise battery life and ground covered and this reduces the effective resolution (GSD) regardless of which sensor you use. It depends on your needs if this is still sufficient or not. In my case, flying at 180m I have a GSD of 10.1cm which is enough to detect but not to classify animals.

 

Kim Hendrikse

14 October 2024 9:55am

180m is indeed very high and from above. I think a 640x512 thermal sensor with a 70mm lens can see animals at at 180m from sideways and could recognise something as a deer, but vertical I doubt it. In any case that's the specs of a handheld monocular I have and the distance that I see deer at that I believe could be recognised as deer.

I have a 1280x1024 pixel thermal camera here I will be testing but it's around 7x the price of the 640x512 one and quite a bit heavier.

Thanks for the details.

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discussion

Global model for Livestock detection in airborne imagery - Data, Applications, and Needs

Ben Weinstein

12 August 2024 8:19pm

Hi all,I was at a AI for ecology working group a few weeks ago and was asked to look into an airborne model for detecting livestock to assist in land-management, agriculture and...

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Elsa Carla De Grandi

4 September 2024 6:15pm

It looks like the website has not been updated since 2022 and indeed you need to register. If you go under 'Manage Account' you may be able to register. I tried to register but I got an error saying 'Login failed! Account is not active'.  I got an email saying "Your account must be approved before being activated. Once your account has been approved, you will be notified." So I am waiting for the account to be approved...

I'll keep you posted

Lars Holst Hansen

6 September 2024 12:46pm

Hi Ben!

Great initiative! 

A review of deep learning techniques for detecting animals in aerial and satellite images

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1569843224000864#b0475 

lists a number of data sets (incl. one published by you it seems...) 

Also, @dmorris keeps a list of Terrestrial wild animal images (aerial/drone):

https://lila.science/otherdatasets#images-terrestrial-animals-drone

which seem like it might be useful for you.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1569843224000864#b0475https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1569843224000864#b0475
Ismael V. Brack

9 September 2024 8:10pm

Hi @benweinstein !

  1. Surely a general detector might be very useful for detecting objects in aerial imagery! Maybe something similar to what MegaDetector does in camera trap images, generally detecting person, animal, and vehicle (and thus also empty photos). This could greatly improve semi-automated procedures. It could also serve as a first step for context-specific detectors or classifiers to be developed on top of this general one.
  2. There is also the WAID dataset that is readily available. Our research group could also provide images containing cows, sheep, and deer from South America.

Best

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event

Catch up with The Variety Hour: August 2024

Alex Rood

20 August 2024 12:58pm

This month, we hear about acoustic imaging sonar that reveals northern elephant seal behaviour, GPS tags that monitor the success of rehabilitated and reintroduced Andean condors, infrared cameras that detect thermal...

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discussion

Open Source Photogrammetry Software

Lindy Clyde Knowles

15 June 2022 9:43pm

Hi All,I'm searching for an open sourced photogrammetry software to swap out Pix4D/Agisoft/DroneDeploy. I've seen mention of OpenDroneMap, but I've struggled with getting it...

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Sarah Dalrymple

28 June 2022 10:21am

Hi Lindy, ODM has a steep learning curve but is fantastic once you understand it. I have much better results than from commerical services, although we were just stitching fairly small (<10ha) areas.

Have a look at WebODM Lightning, this is a paid-for, but very cheap, processing service using ODM that is more similar to commercial services (upload your images, press go). You can upload using the web interface or a Windows app. 

Steffen Döring

7 February 2023 11:39am

Hi Lindy,

WebODM has now a native Windows installer version which costs around 147 $ once - https://opendronemap.org/webodm/download/.

Is has almost all the advantages of the high priced softwares and even presets for some use cases.

Best regards!

Steffen

Steffen Döring

9 August 2024 1:18pm

RealityCapture is now  free to use for students, educators, and hobbyists and for companies making less than $1 million USD/year.

Best regards!

Steffen

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discussion

Drones for IUU (illegal fishing activities & vessel monitoring)

Adam Roberts

20 March 2023 6:00am

Hi, new to Wildlabs and happy to have found itI am currently working on drone design (fixed wing), for the purpose of monitoring illegal fishing vessels. This will be done via...

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Adam Roberts

11 April 2023 5:48am

Hi Frank! Thanks so much for your reply. Yes I have been looking into the same sort of workflow as with camera traps etc and seem to be getting somewhere (although am yet to have my own data set with which to check!). 

Yes, with the transponder issue, actually NONE of the boats here have them! There has been a push to get boats to install them further down the coast, but it was marred by the usual corruption and forceless enforcement. So everything will be visual, rather than working on any signal given out by the boats themselves. I am looking into ai programs that can analyse footage and as you say, it can be done with species so I see no reason it cannot be done with vessels given the parameters to look for

 

Frank van der Most

14 April 2023 12:57am

Seeing the pictures that @lmccaskill uploaded got my brain storming, so to say. Are you working with similar small boats? I was assuming bigger fishing ships that are registered somewhere. If the boats are not registered and there are no existing photos of them, and you want to identify the individual boats, you'll need to build your own catalogue to train an AI.

However / in addition, if the boats have written text on them with a name or a code or number, like in the pictures, then it should be ridiculously easy to identify boats. No AI needed. I discovered recently that my laptop has started showing find results based on text in photos. If different boats are of the same model, again like in the pictures, then there is nothing else left than what is written on them ... well, perhaps the color scheme.

... or perhaps face recognition if the image quality allows it. But then you'll be at square 1 again with training an AI.

Steffen Döring

9 August 2024 12:48pm

Hi all,

maybe it helps 😉 My free manual 'Drones in Biomonitoring' - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8077113 can help to get (more) knowledge how to proceed easily and successfully 😉 It covers topics from buy to fly and data processing.

📖 The manual was developed to help authorities, landscape conservation / maintenance or nature conservation associations etc. in nature conservation to manage their growing monitoring tasks more effectively and cost-efficiently.
🛸 The use of drones can contribute in many ways to increasing the effectiveness of monitoring, reducing costs and minimizing disturbance - https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Steffen-Doering.

Best regards!
Steffen

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discussion

Selecting a thermal imaging drone for wildlife monitoring

Doug Osborn

24 July 2023 4:52am

Hi All,I'm in a small volunteer conservation group in the inner western suburbs of Melbourne, Australia. We care for a small patch of remnant wetlands, and work closely with the...

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Philipp Ramjoué

29 August 2023 12:42pm

Hi Doug,

we are a young startup that uses AI as a tool in nature and wildlife conservation. At the moment we develop a drone with on-board AI (for object detection) and thermal and "normal" camera. If you want to know more about the project, you can contact me philipp@raingers.ai. I would be happy to help you.

 

Steffen Döring

9 August 2024 12:45pm

Hi all,

maybe it helps 😉 My free manual 'Drones in Biomonitoring' - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8077113 can help to get (more) knowledge how to proceed easily and successfully 😉

📖 The manual was developed to help authorities, landscape conservation / maintenance or nature conservation associations etc. in nature conservation to manage their growing monitoring tasks more effectively and cost-efficiently.
🛸 The use of drones can contribute in many ways to increasing the effectiveness of monitoring, reducing costs and minimizing disturbance - https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Steffen-Doering.

Best regards!
Steffen

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event

ForestSAT

Elsa Carla De Grandi

5 July 2024 7:04pm

Seeing the forest and the trees: Promoting the application of spatial technologies for forest observation and analysis

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Elsa Carla De Grandi

3 September 2024 6:02pm

Happy to announce that the event will be recorded! Although unfortunately access to recordings will not be free.By registering you will gain access to all session and workshop...
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Link

Handbook 'Drones in Biomonitoring & Nature Conservation'

Steffen Döring

27 June 2024 9:16pm

The use of drones can contribute in various ways to increase the effectiveness of monitoring, reduce costs, and minimize disturbances. This manual has been developed to support conservation efforts and to help make the growing monitoring tasks more effective and cost-efficient.

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Read "Handbook 'Drones in Biomonitoring & Nature Conservation'" on Zenodo

Handbook 'Drones in Biomonitoring & Nature Conservation'

This manual has been specifically developed to support conservation efforts and to help make the growing monitoring tasks more effective and cost-efficient. The use of drones can contribute in various ways to increase the effectiveness of monitoring, reduce costs, and minimize disturbances. Only by utilizing more innovative methods of data collection can we address the challenges of an increasingly fast-paced world and meet rising demands. This manual is aimed not only at authorities but also at businesses such as planning firms and freelance field ecologists entrusted with preserving our environment.

Zenodo