Training Cambodian researcher and wildlife workers near Pu Trom
We have been busy developing and building ArduPilot Mega based UAV's for conservation and economical research the last couple of months together with our friends from ConservationDrones.org.
The goal is to provide an easy to use, durable, field fixable and affordable solution that can be operated in nearly any environment. Currently our UAV has been deployed to many locations around the globe. This have been interesting times traveling around the globe helping out with research projects and training researchers to use a UAV for their mapping and surveying missions.
This has created quite some media attention, for example in the New York Time, BBC News and local news papers. It is nice to read about the positive, non-military used of UAV's now and then.
Finally I got around to put a web site together. There might be a couple of interesting videos of our trips. If you are interested, hop over to www.researchdrones.com.
Comments
Hun Sen would love these flying around in Cambodian airspace lol.
Congrats to Research Drones and to ConservationDrones. It's always great to see examples of drones being applied in a positive way. And especially to support conservation! Congrats again.
Congratulation on your successful mission. Real hope Andrew and Simon will came up with some new function specific for aerial mapping.
@MJ I am working on some legacy collar stuff, the collars we use can revert to one if the GPS fails so we are working on triangulating them in that case. As for orbiting the collar we could but seeing the animal, that would be another thing. As I am sure you know the difficulty with collars is keeping them running and if you ping it too much it will run out of power fast. This study I am helping with lasts for a year so. There is much BS out there for tracking collars we are taking a while to create a system that is both simple to use and effective at task.
In the past we took images of eggs in nests and that worked, but the nest was floating and obvious. I think FLIR will be the best for animal work ultimately.
@Tridge, I get a bit confused looking at the PX4 products. Can you tell me exactly which board(s) I would need to get to replicated using APM and of course 3DR telemetry air module?
Much Appreciated!!
@Simon,
APM runs very nicely on PX4. Most of my test flights are on PX4 now. It has been fully supported for ArduPlane for a few releases now.
Cheers, Tridge
@Michael: we are currently looking into adding tracking receivers to UAVs. There are a couple of other projects which need our full attention at the moment however.
@Tridge: the terrain following feature sounds extremely exiting! PX4 is on the radar, my goal ATM is to have something stable/reliable to deploy. How reliable is the APM firmware on the PX4 currently?
We should definitely have a chat on G+ hangout. I'll discuss this with our Team.
and congrats to Research Drones.
MJ
How about a lightweight radio tracking receiver for animals fitted with VHF (150-154 or 171-173Mhz) or UHF transmitting collars.
Something along these lines .....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myYyq3SZ2f8
Extra points for switching to loiter mode above the strongest signal (indicated by RSSI??) during a grid search for photo or other task (remotely accessing data from GPS datalogger collar).
Check Mortimers' group for other biological applications.
MJ
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