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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

Travelling with a drone/UK regulations

SOFIA CAPELLAN

22 September 2016 4:16pm

Hi guys, A friend of mine is visiting Cambridge and he would like to bring his drone from Spain. He is certified as drone operator in Spain and he would fly around the...

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Lot Amorós

22 September 2016 5:44pm

Hi All,

For a full list of countries and drone regulations the most up-to-date site is the wiki of uaviators:

http://wiki.uaviators.org/doku.php

Regards

SOFIA CAPELLAN

16 October 2016 6:10pm

Hi all,

First of all, sorry for this delayed response! Thanks for the info, unfortunately i did not have enough time to inform my friend, but now we know for the next time! ;) 

Regards

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discussion

DJI Mavic Pro vs. GoPro Karma

John Probert

27 September 2016 5:10pm

Hello all,   I'm watching DJI's announcement of the DJI Mavic Pro and it is absolutely fascinating. It has fold-up propellers, 27 minute flight time, multiple...

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Lot Amorós

14 October 2016 4:18pm

I will not consider karma for conservation, the 3DR Solo instead is much more smart and open source. Ready for more tasks than just a flying camera.

Mavic of course is very small and very useful for walking on nature.

 

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discussion

Drone teaching/research license

John Probert

7 September 2016 5:47pm

Hello all, The US Federal Aviation Administration recently came out with a long awaited license for piloting drones. Under the new regualtions, anyone with a license can...

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John Probert

5 October 2016 7:30pm

Hi all, 

 

I'm thinking about going for my license. In doing so, I'll do a writeup of my experiences for you all so that way those of you in the United States who are interested in using drones have something to reference when going to take the exam.

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discussion

(ARCHIVED) PHD position available in using drones for mapping

Lot Amorós

20 September 2016 4:34pm

A new PhD position is available at Liverpool John Moores University to work with UAVs and a multispectral camera to study the forests where orangutans and chimpanzees occur. For...

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John Probert

21 September 2016 2:39pm

@Lenny Just saw your profile on the members section. You might be interested in this. 

Thomas Starnes

22 September 2016 9:49am

The application was 20th September though?

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discussion

New review: Opportunities and challenges of drones for ecology

Stephanie O'Donnell

22 June 2016 12:32pm

Katherine Christie and her co-authors have published a new review in the use of UAVs for conservation in Frontiers of Ecology and the Environment.  In a nutshell...

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Drue Freeman

21 August 2016 7:04pm

Unfortunately, I could not see the full article, but the executive summary makes a lot of sense.  I think there might be a couple of other considerations. 

1) As drones become more ubiquitous it is possible that poachers also adopt the technology.  

2) Even if poachers don't adopt the technology, in some high value poaching scenarios they may be able to eavesdrop on the drone communication.   Eventually some kind of security may be necessary to protect the information collected by the drones.  

Overall, I think drone technology is developing at a rapid pace and will prove to be very helpful in conservation.

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discussion

Analytical report on drones in conservation value.

Sofia Tereshchenko

10 December 2015 9:35pm

A very interesting article on drones (used lately) in conservation, I'd say brilliant article, summed with facts on drones, people who are engaged in drones in...

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Stephanie O'Donnell

15 August 2016 11:31am

For anyone interested in an overview of how drones are being deployed for conservation, this piece by Serge Wich (of ConservationDrones.org) provides a comprehensive run through the possibilities.  

 

 

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article

Can Drones Live up to the Hype?

Paul Glover-Kapfer

8 July 2016 12:00am

Drones are being explored for a spectrum of applications in conservation that include mapping, biodiversity inventories, antipoaching patrols, wildlife tracking and fire monitoring. However, questions remain about...

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discussion

Great article talking about applying drones to scientific research

John Probert

13 April 2016 6:30pm

I thought this was a great article. It highlights different, current uses of research in UAVs. 

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Sean Anderson

3 May 2016 9:16am

Interesting.  A case in point is the viral video making the rounds about drone fishing:

We've seen an array of inventive uses for drones of late across a whole range of endeavors, often having direct or indirect implications for natural resource management.  Using drones to improve our ability to target/hunt species of concern seems at once both a natural progression and something new with a slightly ominous overtone.  This strikes me as one of those moments where we might want to pause and take stock of what is going on with this technology and where it might go in the not too distant future.

Should we ignore this development?  Work to restrict the use of drones for such activities?  Support this?  Regardless of where we might come down on this question, I can't help but fell that this notion of drone fishing certainly seems to have the sense of "crossing the Rubicon" somehow.

http://aarr.piratelab.org/news/drone-fishing/

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discussion

What to you is the biggest small problem with using UAVs in the field?

John Probert

24 February 2016 7:47pm

With the way UAVs are designed now, there are large issues with things such as range, battery life and flight time. I'm curious, what is a small problem that should be...

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John Probert

5 April 2016 5:17pm

Wait, can you implement the range extenders in DJI systems? Is it costly in order to do so?

Eric Becker

5 April 2016 5:58pm

jprobert,

Due to the proprietary nature of DJI, no the antenna tracker listed above cannot be added easily.  Some engineering would need to go into hacking DJI.  I'm not sure if you can get the telemetry data  from DJI's app or ground control station.  If so, one could parse the telemetry data and feed the GPS location into the open source tracker.  You could also add another radio on board which transmits the GPS from the UAV.  However, this is not the most efficient way and will cost some flight time for the added weight and power consumption.

Without hacking DJI or doing some digging, you could replace the antennas on the hand controller and UAV with higher gain antennas.  This could improve range, but would limit the directions you could fly(directional antenna).

I will look into data provided by DJI and see what it possible.

Tom Swinfield

26 April 2016 9:34am

I agree that it is likely that a dirigible would probably struggle in a lot of common mapping settings. People do use kites though. If you are interested in developing the flight control systems for dirigibles though I would also suggest that the best place to start is Ardupilot.

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discussion

Collecting Your Opinions about Drones

Sean Anderson

11 April 2016 6:52pm

We are entering the final week or so of our 2nd annual opinion polling effort centered around better understanding the public's general experience with and opinons about UAVs...

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Stephanie O'Donnell

12 April 2016 9:26am

Hi Sean, 

Thanks for sharing your survey - is there a specific date you'll be closing the survey? 

It'd be great if you could share the results of the survey here, as I (for one) will be quite interested to see what comes back. 

Cheers, 

Steph

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discussion

Solar powered drone for conservation

Gregg_Walker

16 March 2016 4:17pm

Hello everyone I'm excited to have joined this community interested in trying to enhance conservation efforts with modern technology. I've been working on...

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Daniel Demmel

26 March 2016 12:03pm

Hey Gregg,

The project looks cool!

Just wondering how much you envisage the load carrying capacity of the drone to be? So being able to carry cameras, GPS, etc.

Also, do you see the price coming down later? $5000 sounds quite steep...

And finally, have you thought about creating it as an open source project? Since all the perks at this points are mostly symbolic, this way people would be more compelled to contribute.

 

Have a nice day,

Daniel

Gregg_Walker

28 March 2016 12:27pm

Hi Daniel

Thanks for the interest in the project.

The load carrying capacity will be a few kgs. The battery I've sized at this stage is around 2kgs and should allow it to fly over night, but if this storage is increased in future it will impact the other loads. It is a tricky trade-off between flight time and capability.

I'm hoping to include both visual and thermal cameras on a gimbal but they will need to be miniature versions (adds to cost). The drone will definitely include GPS/autopilot and I'm also hoping to include onboard image processing in future so the drone can send an alarm when it notices something out of place. The video feed will also need to be encrypted so that poachers cannot use the drone as their own scouting vehicle.

The price tag of $5000 is for the first few prototypes and will come down with mass production and buying in bulk. I don't see it dropping much below $3000-4000 at current equipment prices though. For instance, the solar PV cells and charge circuit alone will cost around $1000 and the cost of even the cheap uncooled microbolometer therml imagers is over $1000. This isn't an average consumer drone but I've tried to keep the costs down as much as possible so it's feasible. I've also considered offering a stripped down drone of just the charging circuit and airframe so that people can add their own equipment and autopilot etc.

In terms of the perks, I tried to model this campaign after other campaigns that had a product already, which has been a mistake. The build diary included in some of the perks was my attempt at making it open source. I am considering reworking all the perks as it is unlikely to get any funding at this stage. 

Thanks for the valuable feedback. Please let me know if you have any other questions or comments.

Cheers,

Gregg

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article

Bringing Conservation Technology to Life

Shah Selbe

17 February 2016 12:00am

We are living in the midst of a pretty exciting era. Never before has humanity been more educated, more connected, more enabled, or more empowered than we are today. There are many reasons to be optimistic about the...

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article

Cheap Space, DIY Imaging and Big Data

WILDLABS Admin

21 December 2015 12:00am

John Amos, President of SkyTruth, explores how remote sensing is being used in conservation today and the importance of sky-truthing. He examines the role that citizen scientists can play in increasing transparency in...

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discussion

Drones as elephant deterrent (herding device)

Dave Cortright

24 November 2015 6:32pm

One of the most novel and promising uses for a drone I've seen is to herd elephants away from crops and villages. Resolve has done some trials and initial results are...

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John Probert

17 December 2015 6:39pm

Hi Dave,

I believe with any DJI drones you can plot out the course of a drone and let it fly along the route with you controling the speed and height of the drone. The limitation is that it has to eb within a mile of the pilot.

 

Regards,

John

Dave Cortright

17 December 2015 6:43pm

True, but ideal the navigation system would need to be more interactive to be able to respond to the elephant movements in real-time.

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