ResearchDrones and ConservationDrones recently went to the amazingly beautiful Caerlaverock wetland area in Scotland. We were helping the Scottish Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust explore the potential of conservation drones for their conservation work.… Read More
Simon Wunderli from ResearchDrones and Serge Wich from ConservationDrones were in Cambodia in April 2013 for BirdLife, Elephants Livelihood Environment Initiative (ELIE), Conservation International (CI) and Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). Featuring the ResearchDrones… Read More
3D model and fly-through created by Serge Wich using PIX4D and ESRI 3D ArcScene. Drone Imagery from Keeyen Pang. This is a 3D model animation of an oil palm mosaic in Sabah. A… Read More
Airframe: Finwing Universeye Penguin Autopilot: APM 2.5+ with Power module GPS: 3DR LEA 6 Telemetry: 3DR 915 Mhz Motor: Finwing stock M2220 1350kv Propeller: Master Airscrew 3-bladed 9 x 7 Pusher ESC: Finwing… Read More
Lian Pin has just moved to New Jersey to begin his year-long sabbatical at Princeton University, his alma mater. He has just finished building the first Conservation Drone in America, which is called… Read More
Keeyen (our Asia team member) used his Skywalker 1900 equipped with an APM 2 and Canon S100 to map an oil palm estate owned by a friend. Keeyen’s Skywalker was able to track… Read More
This is a 15-minute short film about Zuzana’s journey across parts of Madagascar with a drone, shining a spotlight on environmental and livelihood issues on the red island. It is a fascinating and… Read More
Madagascar Team Leader and Drone operator: Zuzana Burivalova (PhD candidate) Applied Ecology & Conservation Lab, ETH Zurich With support from: Dr Martin Bauert, ZOO Zurich Wildlife Conservation Society Madagascar Madagascar National Parks Tom… Read More
0:36 Mission planning 1:32 Takeoff 1:46 On-board cam takeoff 2:08 low flyby 2:53 Landing 3:47 Auto take off from platform 4:40 Spotting fires 5:40 Landing 6:17 Debriefing 6:47 Elephant pictures Video editing by Simon Wunderli (ResearchDrones.com)
2012 Annual Report for ConservationDrones.org Some excerpts: ConservationDrones.org had 49,000 views in 2012. The busiest day of the year was May 29th with 4,416 views. Our visitors came from 158 countries in all! Most visitors came… Read More
Over the last week, ResearchDrones.com and ConservationDrones.org conducted a series of tests of low cost thermal imaging cameras. Models tested: 1. FLIR HS-324 Patrol 19mm Thermal camera (320 x 240 res) (link) 2. NEC… Read More
A fitting last post for what has been a most exciting 2012, which saw the founding of ConservationDrones.org and ResearchDrones.com, hundreds of successful drone missions in Asia and Africa (and a couple of… Read More
After traveling thousands of miles by air, a 16-h “road” trip and surviving 3 flat tires, Remo Peduzzi and Simon Wunderli from ResearchDrones personally brought our brand new WHITE Maja drones to conservation… Read More
Sander van Andel (Max Planck Institute) flies Conservation Drone Maja in Loango National Park, Gabon, capturing turtle nests on the beach (first ever coastal mission!), forest buffaloes and chimpanzee nests (with a marker). Loangodrone flight overview… Read More
If you are using a GoPro HD camera, or any non-GPS enabled video camera, you can use a new web service, GPS4Sport.com, which allows for the synchronization of your APM log (in GPX format)… Read More
3D forest model of a transect in Sumatra, Indonesia, based on aerial images acquired by Conservation Drones. Data processing by Dronemapper.com. Animation by Ervine Lin of ETH Future Cities Laboratory (futurecities.ethz.ch).
Forum Upon requests from some colleagues and friends, we have now put up a Forum page for general discussions on hardware, software, and other topics concerning Conservation Drones. I hope all of you… Read More
Over the last few weeks, ConservationDrones.org has been collaborating with Remo Peduzzi and Simon Wunderlin (from ResearchDrones LLC) to develop the next generation of drones for conservation applications. Remo and Simon bring with… Read More
Collage of Orangutan Nests, a set on Flickr. This is a photo-collage of ~35 orangutan nests in SE Asian rain forests taken by cameras on board Conservation Drones. We are collaborating with colleagues… Read More
Yes! We have teamed up with DroneMapper.com. DroneMapper operates an innovative SaaS system which allows drone pilots to manage their flight data, build beautiful geo-referenced orthomosaic maps, DEMs and 3D models from aerial… Read More
This is an 18-photo composite image of Zurich Zoo’s new elephant enclosure. Aerial photographs were taken by a camera on board an autonomous Conservation Drone 2.0 that was flying at a speed of… Read More
We are experimenting with several different airframes for the next fleet of Conservation Drones. One of these models is the X5 which we mentioned earlier. Another promising candidate is the new Condor Skywalker 1880. The main… Read More
We finally were able to test our homemade parachute (40″ diameter). Initial tests suggest that a deployment altitude of about 10m above ground should be about just right to minimize drift. Our next… Read More
Training Ahimsa Campos-Arceiz and the MEME team from the University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus (Management & Ecology of Malaysian Elephants). Emma Stokes and Tony Lynam from WCS dropped by for a peek as… Read More
We tried these two new camera placement options under a wing that worked very well in the field. Again, the iSPONGE served its purpose in dampening motor vibration.
Two orangutan nests spotted by a Conservation Drone flying at 100m above ground.
Finally found time and some good weather to test fly the latest addition to our Conservation Drones fleet — ArduCopter. This test flight was fully autonomous, including takeoff and landing. Details of test… Read More
Asia WWF Nepal: Chitwan National Park, Nepal, Anti rhino-poaching patrol and habitat monitoring University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus and Rimba: Peninsular Malaysia, Wildlife survey and monitoring Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme: Aras Napal, Indonesia,… Read More
Serge and Lian Pin training Alex and Fiona from the Ugalla Primate Project to operate a Conservation Drone bound for Tanzania to survey chimps!
Serge and I spent the last few days in Asten, the Netherlands, building up our Conservation fleet. These will be going to the Jane Goodall Institute, University of Nottingham Malaysia, and WWF Nepal,… Read More
The mission of this website is to share our knowledge for building low-cost Conservation Drones to help conservation workers and researchers in developing countries do their jobs a lot more effectively and cost… Read More