Dear Drone Community,
As you probably know, our wildlife and nature is in danger, only last year millons of hectares was devastated by wildfire in California, Europe, and Asia. If we don't do anything, the recuperation of this areas will take long time to recover.
Some years ago we published in this community our first experiments with Dronecoria : a drone for automated forest restoration.
You can see our improvements in the above video:
We believe in the power of Open Source and Digital fabrication to achieve the goal of a massive industrial land-scale restoration. We would like to share the methodology and drone design to encourage groups around the world to do it.
During this time we even experimented with the 3DR Y6 hexacopter for a early proof of concept:
As you see, now the prototype is very simple, a laser cut wooden frame designed to carry a 8 litters plastic bottle with a 3D printed seed dispenser (already working and available at shapeways).
We would like to drop coated seeds, with microbiology and nutrients protected from sun and predators. The first mission is to stop erosion throw green-cover for recover the soil for the next generation of trees.
We would like to keep the total weight below 25 kg for legal purposes. The estimated payload will be around 8-10 kg.
The normal operation will be to fly as fast as possible 1km away, drop the 10 kg of seeds in the designated area and come back. So the battery can be reduced to achieve maximum payload, the flights can de short as 5 min.
And now, we need your help:
Can you recommend us a combination of motors/ propeller / battery?
Thank you!
Lot Amorós from aeracoop.net
Comments
I would be glad to help on designing your carry drone. PM me if you want.
https://www.biocarbonengineering.com/
They are not open source but some good info there
Thanks for your feedback Sam.
In the Ground Station side, we need to improve how to do the operations, like if we draw a big area for sowing, we should be able to divide it automatically in different flight paths, for come back, change the battery, refill with new seeds, and start the mission from the last point.
Regards.
We focus on ground control stations so I'm no expert on specifying multirotor parts but I wanted to say what a great project I think this is. I know there are other people working on propitiatory seed planting UAVs, but I love the idea of an open source solution.
Sam
Worthington Sharpe