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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.

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New Paper: Drones and Bornean Orangutan Distribution

Sol Milne
Sol Milne's new paper, Drivers of Bornean Orangutan Distribution across a Multiple-Use Tropical Landscape, is now available.  Using drones to detect orangutan nest density in aerial surveys (as shared during our...

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How do I strategically allocate drones for conservation?

WILDLABS Team
Our tenth and final Tech Tutor of Season 2 is Harvard University PhD candidate, Elizabeth Bondi, who tackled the question, "How do I strategically allocate drones for conservation?". Watch it on the WILDLABS Youtube...

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WWF Conservation Technology Series: Drones in Conservation

hello drone enthusiastsIssue #5 of the WWF Conservation Technology Series entitled “Drones for Conservation” launches today: 6 co-authors from University of Exeter Drone Lab...

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Hi Julie,

yes authorizations are needed for drones and these are particularly difficult in many countries and are specific to the weight/size of the drone. Look at our report because the difference with a drone from an (untethered) balloon is the the presence of active collision avoidance, manueverability, size/weight and how far it flies (i.e. if it is beyond line of sight it is a different permit). 

This looks like  a great resource, thanks!

Hello Aurelie,

Thank you for sharing this info. I just downloaded the brochure and I am sure I will find it very useful. I have senseFly's eBee Classic, with RGB, multispectral and thermal cameras, and look for cases of using those in nature/biodiversity monitoring/management. I guess the brochure will include some cases. Thanks for sharing.
kind regards, Giorgi (from Georgia)

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Press Release: BAS Giant Iceberg Mission

British Antarctic Survey
A research mission to determine the impact of the giant A-68a iceberg on one of the world’s most important ecosystems using underwater robotic gliders gets underway this January. A team of scientists, led by British...

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Existing guidelines for reducing disturbance to wildlife when using drones-

Does anyone know of any existing guidelines for reducing disturbance to wildlife when using drones- please share!

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Hi Isla,

That's something that the drone world really needs to take on because there can be a world of difference in drone size, prop types and motor types to reduce impact on the wildlife we're studying.

I've had one real world experience where a Marmot about the size of a large cat was scared of a small drone (DJI Mavic Pro)

But a drone about half the size that could do the exact same work was able to fly 15 feet from the Marmot and not disturb it. If you're only needing an observation drone to take photos and videos I highly recommend the DJI Mavic Mini. I'm not a rep for them but fly their products a lot.

If you have any questions I'm happy to help.

 

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Event: Wildlife Drones at ESA20

Wildlife Drones
Join Wildlife Drones at this week's Ecological Society of Australia conference! Learn about their work at the Windows into Resilience and Recovery Symposium on Wednesday, 2nd December, and participate in their virtual...

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Making the Most of Tech Tutors Season 2!

WILDLABS Team
WILDLABS is celebrating its five year anniversary! Throughout the rest of 2020, we'll be sharing articles, community features, and case studies showcasing the incredible projects, collaborations, and successes that this...

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WILDLABS Tech Tutors: Season Two

WILDLABS Team
The WILDLABS Tech Tutors are back! Starting this December, join us for our second season and get even more answers to your biggest "how do I do that?" questions of conservation tech. Whether you're a #tech4wildlife...

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Conservation Technology User Guidelines Issue 5: Drones

World Wildlife Fund
The latest issue of WWF's Conservation Technology Series is about drones and is designed for a broad audience of conservationists. Containing ten case studies, scientific literature, and handy information on getting...

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Towards a more ethical Indian drone industry

My organisation (www.techforwildlife.com) recently put together a report on how the civilian drone industry in India could be encouraged to keep ethical considerations in mind...

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Hello Shashank, I found your post very interesting - congratulations on looking at the ethical side of this technology!  One of the reasons that our organisation, WildTrack, focuses on non-invasive wildlife monitoring technology is to avoid the ethical problems associated with disturbing animal behaviour, physiology and ecology. We're also using drones, both fixed wing and multicopter for monitoring and developing AI recognition algorithms, and trying to work out the optimal protocols for collecting data without any disturbance. I'd be interested to talk more with you about what you see as the major ethical challenges. 

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Report: Helping Ensure Ethical Indian Drone Operations

Shashank Srinivasan
As drone usage continues to grow within the conservation tech community, driven by improved performance, increased accessibility, and the wide range of data collection methods that can be served by drones, so do the...

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#Tech4Wildlife News: Airdropping Sensors from Moths

University of Washington
The miniaturisation of technology is rapidly opening up new possibilities for conservationists and environmental scientists in need of less invasive, easy to deploy solutions. University of Washington researchers have...

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[ARCHIVED] Drones and the law webinar

This will have a UK focus but could be interesting to all An interactive 2-part webinar on the legal aspects of drones by academics, non-enforcement and enforcement officers...

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Very cool, thanks for sharing, Adrian! We'll put this up on Twitter as well.

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Webinar: Drones for Change

Wikifactory
Interested in the changing role that drones can play in addressing major environmental and social challenges? Check out this free Wikifactory panel webinar, "Drones for Change: How UAV’s and Robotics are being deployed...

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Webinar: Advances in Fisheries Electronic Monitoring

SAFET
2020 Seafood and Fisheries Emerging Technology Conference kicks off their webinar series this Thursday, Sept. 24th at 5 PM PT/ 8 PM ET. Register now for New Models, New Applications: Advances in Fisheries Electronic...

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Tech Tutors: How do I use a drone to capture radio-tracking data?

Hi Wildlabbers,  We hope you enjoyed our seventh WILDLABS Tech Tutor episode, featuring Debbie Saunders, who tackled the...

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Hi Wildlabbers,

What a great episode and Q&A!! We had SO many questions for Debbie that we couldn't get to all of them during the stream. If you have follow-up questions about tracking wildlife with drones, be sure to ask them here and we'll pass them along to Debbie. You can also see all of the questions from the session here in our collaborative document, which also has resources and a log of the chat!

We'll be posting the full tutorial and Q&A video here tomorrow, so if you missed the episode, you'll be able to catch up soon.

Thanks to everyone who came to this episode, and we hope to see you again next week!

-Ellie

Hi all,

Firstly, I'd just like to say a big thank you to everyone who attended my Tech Tutors presentation last month. And secondly, thank you for your patience in allowing me to respond to your questions. If you have any further questions, please feel free to post them on the forum here or email me ([email protected]). I would love to hear from you!

Cheers,

Debbie

Tech Tutors Q&A:

Carlos: I have one single question today: is Debbie or someone using fully autonomous drones in their projects? No human control ever? Here, they are banned, even in non-populated areas.

Debbie: Our first research prototypes were autonomous (Cliff et al. 2015; 2018), however it had to be able to be controlled manually if needed to comply with flight regulations.

However, the autonomous nature of that prototype meant that it wasn’t able to be readily adapted for use on a diversity of drone platforms as more advanced systems became available, and also recognised that wildlife researcher’s primary need was for a tracking system in the air rather than a robotic tracking system.  However, one day we hope to again be able to integrate our system into large-scale fully autonomous monitoring programs.  With our current system, once you are provided with bearings to all tags within range you can begin to make decisions about where the next best place to go is to get the most effective intersecting bearing lines.

Cliff, O. Saunders, D. and Fitch, R. (2018) Robotic Ecology: Tracking Small Dynamic Animals with an Autonomous Aerial Vehicle. Science Robotics Vol. 3, Issue 23, eaat8409.

Cliff, O., Fitch, R., Sukkarieh, S., Saunders, D.L. and Heinsohn, R. (2015).  Online localisation of radio-tagged wildlife with an autonomous aerial robot system.  Proceedings of Robotics: Science and Systems 2015, Rome, Italy, July.

 

Sol Milne: Amazing work! Has this worked for small, below skin tracking tags?

Debbie: Our system can track any very-high frequency (VHF) radio-tag from any tag manufacturer globally. This includes VHF-tags that are designed to be inserted under the animal’s skin. We have tested Giant Armadillo implant tags previously and have even been able to detect them from when they were 3 metres underground in a burrow (although they are actually pretty big tags!).  The effect of having an implanted tag is the same for both drone and manual tracking – with no whip antenna the detection distance is shorter but it can typically still be detected.

 

Julian Dale: Can you provide a cost for your system? We are developing a system for a longer endurance fixed wing aircraft VTOL (2-4hr endurance) to cover large areas and with full autonomy. I would be interested to chat more about a collaboration if you are interested?

Debbie: Absolutely interested Julian! We definitely have both a fixed wing VTOL and full autonomy on our roadmap – it’s just a matter of getting to it.  Please do get in touch ([email protected]) to discuss further and we can also give you some specific pricing for your project needs.

 

Julian Dale: Would it be possible to combine two antenna and SDR's to cover a wider swath on a fixed wing?

Debbie: This certainly may be possible, but it would need to be thoroughly tested with both the pros & cons considered, such as extra complexity in the code, extra hardware housing and integration etc.

 

Paul: Q about RF (RT?)- have you looked into using Bluetooth Low Energy or LoRa instead of VHF? Bluetooth or Lora Gateway on the drone would look for signals, vast amount lighter - but not sure about range, hence my question, thank you all the same.

Debbie: When developing our system we decided that rather than trying to invent a new type of miniature tag which has it’s own inherent challenges, we wanted to develop a better way to detect and track VHF tags that are already used all around the world.  Having said this, we have explored various alternatives in terms of communications and data transfer such as LoRa but found our setup to perform more reliably and to have much greater communication ranges (tested for real time data feeds out to 2.5km currently).

 

Arky: Wonder if this system could be adapted for fixed wing drones / Vertical take-off and land (VTOL) systems that could be useful in some use-cases.

Debbie: Yes, it can be. We are currently in the process of exploring the best way for our system to be adapted onto a fixed-wing drone platform and it is a key part of our development roadmap. We can see many advantages and applications for using fixed-wing drones – especially as they are typically able to search much larger areas!

 

Rob: Hi Debbie, this system is amazing! I am so with Steph (what I could've done with this 10 or 15 years ago)! I was wondering, can your system work with SensorGnome-style coded VHF tags?

Debbie: The key issue with tracking coded tags using our system is that they are all on the same frequency.  Our system works by finding the maximum signal for each unique frequency so having lots of tags in all different directions but with the same frequency wouldn’t work.  Having said this, I have wondered whether we would be able to ramp up the interrogation of coded tag signals, detect them all and decode them on the fly so that they can be located. But I’m sure my tech team would roll their eyes at me over that one since I am sure it would quite challenging to do.  But if you have any good ideas on how this may be achieved we’d be happy to give it a shot!

 

Sophie: Provided an Argos goniometer on board the drone, you could detect the animal equipped with an Argos tag as well?

Debbie: I’m not sure exactly what signals the goniometer is detecting, however if the Argos tag (or any other tag) includes a standard VHF radio signal as a back up option in case the tag fails then we can track it with our system regardless of who the tag manufacturer is.  This may not work if they don’t use VHF radio-signals.

 

Sophie: Do you have a system to recover the drone in case of loss?

Debbie: If you wanted to put a radio-tag on your drone as well as on your animals, then our system could certainly track them both as long as they are within the detection range of the tag. The detection range varies depending on size, with small tags having shorter detection distances.

 

Pascal: Have you tried/considered using an automatic direction finder system (which can 'virtually rotate' its beam direction using a phased array of multiple antennas)? And/or continuously recording the received radio signal for (additional) later offline analysis?

Debbie: Yes indeed, we have considered and explored both of these options. The use of a phase array creates many interesting hardware and software challenges when considering a lightweight, robust system that can be used on a drone, and although there could certainly be benefits in such a system we found that the costs generally outweighed the benefits.  In terms of collecting data and processing it later, this is currently possible as well as real time data collection. However one of the key advantages of our current system is that you are not “flying blind” since you can see exactly what signals you are/aren’t picking up and their directions which means that your data collection is much more targeted and effective.

 

Melissa: How does the drone work in high wind? What is the max wind speed you can fly it in? Also, what was the updated the flight time after your initial troubleshooting (if it got better than 10 minutes)?

Debbie: The system can work in high wind but the error margins around estimated locations will be larger due to the buffeting effect of the wind on the magnetometer which provides the bearings.  If all you want to see is that you can detect your animals wind wouldn’t matter too much, but if you are aiming to get accurate locations you will find they will have larger errors than if you flew in calmer conditions.  If it is really windy and the drone is working really hard to maintain it’s location you will also notice that it can tilt quite a lot and so in this case the antenna may be pointing at the sky instead of across the landscape and so would be less likely to detect tags.  It’s always a good idea to fly within the recommended wind speed rating of your drone (from memory the DJI Matrice 210 recommended max wind speed is 10 m/s.

 

Julian: Can you tune your system to cope with radio interference from different aircraft? [ STEPH: is this duke julian? If so - we might hold this question]

Debbie: Not exactly sure what interference from different aircraft you are referring to sorry, but dealing with radio-interference is certainly one of the greatest challenges when listening for low powered tags in our noisy radio world!  However, we do have a nice combination of hardware and software that enable us to eliminate or manage a range of different potential interferers both within and outside of the target frequency bands.

 

Liam: You mentioned earlier that you were interested in the migration routes of the parrots - have you tested the use of your system for migration pathways in any other species? And how do you work with the battery limitations?

Debbie: We haven’t had the opportunity to use our system to understand the full migratory pathways of swift parrots yet since we are currently unable to use long-term attachments on this species so we have had to focus on tracking them within their winter range instead – but we’re super keen to get there one day! We haven’t tested it along migration pathways as such, but rather we have tracked other migratory species within their winter foraging range. Would be great fun to try tracking along an entire migratory path though!

 

Miguel: Drones are usually very noisy. Don't animals run away when they hear the drone? Or does it fly high enough that it doesn't disturb the animals? How high can it fly while being able to get the data?

Debbie: Radio-tracking from a drone is less disruptive to most species compared to manually radio-tracking on foot, or using other drone sensors like visual or thermal cameras. This is because our system doesn’t require you to fly directly above or in close proximity of the animals you are tracking in order to get their location. Our system detects signals from distance, determines bearings and then triangulates the animal’s location. Filghts are generally limited to below 120m however we typically fly at around 40m or so depending on the height of the vegetation (at least this is the specific regulation height in Australia).

 

Isla Duporge: Thanks Ellie, I was just wondering how many have been made, cost of hiring and whether there is the intention to be able to sell them to researchers.

Debbie: So far we have made 30 of these systems and we are happy to provide you with specific costing details for your project if you would like to get in touch ([email protected] ). They are only available for hire, not to buy, but unlike most equipment hire arrangements, we provide full technical support for you and your team should you need any help or guidance. Also, given the tech is advancing all the time, if you have a long term project we will upgrade your system each year with the latest model!

 

Phoebe Griffith: Similar question to above, I was wondering if they might be possible to purchase (rather than hire) for long term tracking projects (we track animals for 2+ years), and if so what the approx costs are?

Debbie:

Same response as above:

We are happy to provide you with specific costing details for your project if you would like to get in touch ([email protected] ). They are only available for hire, not to buy, but unlike most equipment hire arrangements, we provide full technical support for you and your team should you need any help or guidance. Also, given the tech is advancing all the time, if you have a long term project we will upgrade your system each year with the latest model!

 

Rob: Have you had a chance to look at using tags/untagged animals for abundance (e.g. koalas) or survival studies, as your drones can cover so much area

Debbie: Yes, so we are currently in the process of using both thermal and radio-tracking drone technology to find both tagged and untagged animals at the same site. We recognise that not all animals can be tagged and have found that thermal technology can help fill that gap. The great thing about drones is that they are capable of carrying multiple sensors, allowing you to collect a diverse range of data.

 

Sean: Are you using an "off the shelf" flight platform or is it bespoke?

Debbie: Our system is able to be mounted onto off-the-shelf drone platforms that can carry a 1kg payload, such as the DJI Matrice 210 and similar models.

 

Carly: Also, this might be a stupid question, but can these things go up at night? E.g. tracking nocturnal animals.

Debbie: No such thing as a stupid question! They are all good! Drones can certainly be flown at night to track nocturnal animals. However, it should be noted that in most places, you’ll need to be a licensed drone pilot and have special authorisation to fly at night. We recommend that you check your local area’s drone rules and regulations for more information on this before you fly.

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Tech Tutors: Review Session

WILDLABS Team
Missing Tech Tutors? Us too! Catch up on every episode from Season 1, check out some of our community highlights, and find out what we loved most about launching this series in this mid-week Tech Tutors review session....

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Sustainable Fishing Challenges: Fishing Gear Innovations

Daniel Steadman
Today, Sustainable Fishing Challenges group leader Daniel Steadman discusses how fishing gear itself could benefit from fresh technological innovations to prevent both environmental damage and damage to species and...

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Tracking Wild Reptiles, Amphibians, And Their Temperatures

Emily Taylor
In this case study from herpetologist Emily Taylor, we learn about the best methods and gear used to track snakes, lizards, and other reptiles and amphibians via radio-telemetry, and how these techniques have changed...

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Hi, have we had any break throughs in radio transmitters for snakes, surgery is way too invasive in my opinion. It works but we need to look at different technologies. 
Hi, I would also be interested if any new technologies recently turned up and if you may have a list of producers?
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How do I use a drone to capture radio-tracking data?

Debbie Saunders
Our seventh WILDLABS Tech Tutor is Debbie Saunders, who tackled the question: How do I use a drone to capture radio-tracking data? You can catch up on this tutorial on our Youtube channel and read through the...

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Kākāpō Dreaming: A Wildlife Drones Adventure

Wildlife Drones
What is it like to track endangered species using drones? In this blog post from Wildlife Drones, Dr. Debbie Saunders travels to New Zealand to track the Kākāpō, an extemely rare and elusive bird of which approximately...

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WILDLABS Tech Tutors: Season One

WILDLABS Team
We've wrapped season one of Tech Tutors! Thank you to all of our Tutors, and to everyone who attended and made these episodes so exciting! You can find all of our episodes on the WILDLABS Youtube Channel, and find...

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Connecting to MBARI's Deep-Sea Instruments

MBARI
The Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute's MARS ocean observatory may someday make conducting deep-sea research more accessible and affordable thanks to Deep-Sea Connect, their new wireless system engineered to ...

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