This month, 3DR’s Senior R&D Engineer Brandon Basso spoke about the critical role drone technology will play in environmental sustainability at an international conference at the University of Exeter, Penryn.
3DR was the only UAV company to present at the conference, a first-of-its-kind EU initiative that brought together academic experts, researchers, photogrammetrists, and engineers with private sector vendors from 3DR, QuestUAV, and Sensefly to kick off the academic discussion about using UAVs as a research tool.
“Our connection to the academic community is huge,” said Basso, who gave a keynote about the potentialities of aerial survey and ran hardware demos with Serge Wich of ConesrvationDrones.org. That’s because drones—affordable, autonomous, and accurate aerial technology—represent a better and more reliable collection mechanism to help scientists get the data they need. UAVs will also propel new science, opening up fields and studies and discoveries that would have been unrealistic or unimaginable before this technology.
But the true impact of scientific study is the advancement it enables in real world applications. Ultimately, all of this research manifests into real tools that people outside of the sciences will use for good—bird and habitat protection, site survey, invasive species protection, even archaeology.
“It’s not just consumer electronics, aerospace, and Silicon Valley,” Basso said. “That stuff is very important, but we can embrace much more than that. The academic community will help us innovate and discover important new applications we never could have thought of on our own. And they seem to love 3DR products.”
Click here to learn more about the UAVs in Environmental Science Conference.
Comments
Nice round of presentations. Wish I had the audio files. I am now exploring alternatives for surveying the health of kelp beds.
Some of my work in the region (Lyme Regis):
Gallery
And if you have Google Earth, a sample just a bit further west:
Google Earth KML
In reference to the picture it's true that the north coast of Cornwall is a surfing capital on England (people are surfing in it), but the picture in this blog post wasn't taken in UK, let alone the South West. I've attached a more representative image. It's great that you guys are there presenting about opportunities (Cornwall is one of the poorest regions of the UK)
It's also great Brandon had the opportunity to visit one of the UK most scenic areas. It would have been awesome to have seen some aerial footage or mapping of numerous local castles,Tintagel, the completely disputed home of King Arthur or Restormal Castle amongst too many to mention (Oh and Pendennis Castle which is right in Falmouth, down river from Penryn ). Or one of many other historical sites like the stone circles (more) or the just plain weird Men-an-Tol.