Drone News & Articles

Australian researchers have captured beautiful aerial footage of thousands of green turtles congregating on the edge of the Great Barrier Reef as they prepare to nest.

Scientists from Queensland Government's Department of Environment and Science (DES) captured the footage using a drone at the world's largest green turtle rookery at Raine Island, a vegetated coral cay approximately 620 kilometres north-west of Cairns.

Green turtles, named after the color of their cartilage and fat, are found mostly in tropical and subtropical waters, and migrate long distances between feeding grounds and the beaches where they emerged as hatchlings, some 35 years after they were born.

The creatures are endangered and are under threat due to hunting, overharvesting of their eggs, loss of beach nesting sights and becoming trapped in fishing apparatus.

Raine Island is the biggest remaining turtle rookery in the world, but despite attracting a "massive aggregation" of the creatures, scientists noticed that they were not reproducing as expected due to nests flooding and inhospitable terrain.

"We sort of became aware that although there's these massive aggregations, the actual reproduction isn't working so well," Dr Andrew Dunstan, from the DES, told CNN, explaining that his team noticed turtles were falling off cliffs, becoming trapped in the heat and suffering flooding in their nests.

After implementing a series of interventions to help the struggling turtles, scientists then sought to track the population.

In research conducted in December and published in scientific journal PLOS ONE on Thursday, they found that using drones - or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) - was the most accurate way of documenting the endangered sea creatures.

In order to count the creatures, researchers had initially painted the turtles' shells with a white stripe of non-toxic paint while they gathered on the beach and then waited for them to return to the water.

When they tried to count the turtles from the boat, they found that they came away with biased results. For accuracy and ease, scientists deployed drones to film the creatures.

"Trying to accurately count thousands of painted and unpainted turtles from a small boat in rough weather was difficult. Using a drone is easier, safer, much more accurate, and the data can be immediately and permanently stored," Dunstan, senior research scientist and lead author of the paper, said in a statement.

Using drones, the team revealed up to 64,000 turtles swimming around the island waiting to come ashore to lay their eggs.

"We were underestimating that a lot. We're finding 1.73-times as many turtles with the drone and as we do when we directly compare with the observer counts," Dunstan told CNN, adding that the team can now go back and adjust historic population estimates.

Researchers plan to use the results to understand and manage the turtle population, and hope that in the future they will be able to automate the counts from video footage using artificial intelligence.

Written by CNN | June 9 2020

It's one of 10 rivers in the world that collectively contribute up to 95 per cent of plastic in the ocean.

Running for more than 4,000 kilometres, the Mekong River flows through six countries, starting in China and making its way through Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.

It is used by millions of people and is home to a rich ecosystem. But now its pollution problem poses an issue for the region and Australia.

"Plastic pollution that originates along a river like the Mekong, may make its way out to the sea, and ultimately — given winds and waves and currents — that could end up on Australian shores as well," CSIRO principal research scientist Britta Denise Hardesty suggested.

"So whether you care about wildlife, whether you care about tourism or what's in your own backyard, the global nature of this problem means something over the other side of the world could end up in your backyard."

Long before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, scientists were working on a global plastic pollution survey backed by the CSIRO at a number of sites around the world to see how the issue was impacting on river systems.

For months, researchers have been studying plastic pollution at five sites along the Mekong River in South-East Asia, and along the Ganges River in India.

Preliminary results released his week show the Mekong River is suffering the most from plastic bottles and plastic bags being dumped in or nearby the precious waterway.

Yet even with the preliminary data in, scientists concede there could be an even bigger task ahead.

Now they're trying to quantify just how the COVID-19 pandemic will worsen the problem.

Kakuko Nagatani-Yoshida, from the United Nations Environment Program, said the pandemic meant there had been exponential growth in the use of single-use plastic.

"We are trying to have a better estimate to know how bad the impact will be," she told a news conference in Bangkok this week.

"Even before COVID-19, we knew that working on plastic pollution was really trying to solve this gigantic problem.

"On top of that, we all know that saving lives in a COVID-19 situation requires a lot of hygiene products, personal protection equipment at the hospitals and even at home."

Ms Nagatani-Yoshida said the sad thing was that for the majority of Asian countries, most plastic would likely wind up in landfill sites.

"We are afraid that much of the plastic waste is not even making its way to landfill, they're just simply being dumped into the environment," she said.

Back in February, the ABC was invited to have an inside look at the arsenal of technology being used by some of the brightest minds in the industry to quantify and solve the plastic pollution problem.

The "arsenal" involves two major technologies. One of them is drones.

Introducing the plastic-fighting drone

They're able to capture thousands of images of plastic debris floating in and around the Mekong, which will then be used to identify individual pieces of plastic.

Those bits of plastic will then be given a geo-tag with a precise location, which is fed into a huge database that will help build a machine-learning algorithm to identify plastic pollution hot-spots on a broad scale.

Scientists and researchers say it's "revolutionising" the way environmental problems can be quantified and solved, simply by dramatically reducing the amount of time it takes to process information.

"It's a real game changer," Adam Hodge from the United Nations Environment Program told the ABC outside the Lao capital, Vientiane.

"If we were trying to assess the plastic pollution leakage sites or sources that we're looking at today with traditional methods, we could do surveys that could take five or 10 years.

"With the technology that we have now, we're able to get that information within a year or less.

"It's advancing our ability to tackle this problem at an early stage, and we know that we can't wait any longer to tackle this problem."

While the drones can detect and photograph large pieces of plastic, there are plenty of smaller pieces known as microplastics (usually 5 millimetres or smaller) that can't be spotted from the air.

As a result, the Laos project is also using a Japanese-developed contraption called an Albatross to trap and study how much microplastic is getting into the river.

The chief executive of Japanese start-up Pirika, Kojima Fujio, said the Albatross sucked in the microplastics, which were then caught in a net and taken back to the laboratory for analysis.

All up, it takes about three minutes.

"Many researchers are trying to find microplastics from rivers, but the common method requires using boats, and that's sometimes very costly," Mr Fujio said.

"So we decided to reduce the sampling cost and develop the portable device."

Ideally, they will then be able to trace the plastic product and where it was produced, and talk to plastic companies about potential changes to their product design.

"It's a very difficult process, and actually we've only succeeded to find 30 per cent of the product categories of microplastic," he said.

Identifying microplastics is still extremely difficult, but Mr Fujio said his team had some success already in Japan.

"For example, in my Japanese experience, we found 25 per cent of microplastics in Japanese rivers is actually from artificial grass from football grounds," he said.

"It's a huge problem that nobody knows about."

Mr Fujio said it was too early to know exactly what the main source of microplastic was in the Mekong, but he had some early indications.

"Maybe some of the microplastic comes from general waste like broken bottles and packages," he said.

Preliminary results show microplastics are abundant in the Mekong, and polypropylene is the dominant type of plastic found.

Polypropylene is a common plastic used in consumer packaging.

So how is this helping in the fight against ocean plastic?

Mr Hodge said plastic waste filling our waterways and ending up in the ocean was a big issue that needed to be addressed.

"You have microplastics [and] larger pieces of plastic pollution getting into the environment, impacting ecosystems, potentially even getting into the food we eat, so this is a problem that's not far away," he said.

"It's very immediate for large swathes of the population."

It's why Dr Hardesty says the benefit of this project is that instead of making assumptions based on models, "we're going out there and collecting real data".

"Rivers are hugely important because what flows along the rivers ends up out there in the oceans," she said.

"We're doing survey work along rivers and in inland areas as well, so we can find out how much debris is flowing down those rivers and ending up out there in our oceans."

Rajitha Athukorala, from the Asian Institute of Technology, said the drone technology was exciting, and using machine learning to help the environment was a huge motivation.

He explained that the algorithm researchers were working on was also being developed using open source data, such as population density and river flows, to help to identify where and why plastic was seeping into the Mekong River in Laos.

"So population, the hotels, and the impact from different festivals, like tourism, all this will [be looked at to] try to pick up the hotspots," Mr Athukorala said, adding the data would be used to pick and validate their model.

Once the team can identify hotspots, they will look at localised solutions that can be scaled up.

It may be as simple as providing more garbage bins in an area frequented by tourists, or working with different councils to improve waste-management systems.

"We need to go out there, ask the questions, collect the data we need, and when we have that information we're able to make smart decisions," Dr Hardesty said.

"Then we can figure out the best places to have interventions all along the way."

She pointed out that while there was "no single silver bullet" to addressing the issue, having information from many different cities and countries around the world would allow the CSIRO to identify solutions that were likely to be most effective.

"It's important for solutions to be workable in a particular cultural and social environment, so you can't just have a once-size-fits-all solution for every component of the problem."

Amy Bainbridge | 31 May 2020

You don't need an expensive drone to shoot the best video.

“A drone is a camera,” Ani Acopian begins simply. “And it can fly. It’s basically a flying super-camera! I’d love to see more film and TV productions embrace the nimble and magical nature of drones and use them for more than bird’s eye view establishing shots.”

The director’s video for London-based record label AWAL (Artists Without a Label) unfolds like a minute-long homage to the narrative potential of UAVs. It lifts off from a desk, flies out a sliding-glass window, up over the room, down a stairwell and through a car. There’s a restaurant, some skaters in an empty pool, a parking lot junk yard and a backyard pool party. It’s a bright, sun-shiny picture of Southern California in a time before social distancing turned us all into nocturnal weirdos.

The sequence is stitched together to give the appearance on long shot. That’s particularly the work of some editing magic, which pulled together a still-impressive five shots to create the final product. The result comes in no small part due to the flying of Robert McIntosh. The pilot, who had previously collaborated with director Spike Jonze on the 2012 skate video “Pretty Sweet,” custom built the drone.

Weighing in at 120 grams, it was built by removing the camera from a GoPro Hero 6. That, along with the associated wires, were transferred onto the body of a racing drone. The result was palm-sized and fragile, with a dismal battery life of around three to five minutes a go. But the tiny size also allowed for an extremely nimble flying camera capable of shooting 4K video. The drone was flown at a slow speed, with McIntosh piloting through a pair of FPV racing goggles, with radio guidance from director of photography, Eric Maloney.

Acopian says the nature of the shoot required a fair bit of improvisation on the part of the crew, particularly with some scene utilizing up to 60 extras. Each were given a specific action to perform, while the director sat far away, giving directions through a bullhorn, so as to not be picked up through the camera’s wide-angle lens.

“We weren’t able to rehearse with the cast or block out a flight path with the drone ahead of time,” she explains, “so the biggest challenge was showing up at a new location each morning and figuring out what the drone path, talent blocking and VFX markers would be, then rehearsing as much we could up until around two hours before sundown, at which point we had as many takes as we could fit into that two-hour window to nail the shot. If something wasn’t working, we changed it because otherwise we put the whole scene at risk of not happening.”

Each scene naturally required multiple takes — up to 15 in some cases. And yes, that fragile little drone did crash a few times — though it was mostly no worse for wear.

“There was one crash that gave us all a scare, which happened while filming the scene where a partygoer gets caked,” Acopian adds. “The actress took a step back, directly into the path of the flying drone, and the drone got caught in their hair and turned off. Luckily, she was chill with getting a little bit of her hair snipped off so we could get the drone out, and the guys were able to patch it up in about 20 minutes. Twenty minutes later we were shooting again and she took another cake to the face. A true hero.”

After the shoot, the video was processed through ReelSteady — stabilization software created by McIntosh, which was acquired by GoPro back in March. Then it was effects company Alpha Studios’ job to help stitch things together into one continuous shot.

“We originally wanted to make every transition completely seamless and hidden, but locations and logistics meant that we had to make most of our transitions stylized. We worked closely with Alpha Studios to plot out where one shot would end and where the preceding shot would begin,” producer Jeremiah Warren says. “Kaitlyn Yang, from Alpha Studios, was the on-set VFX supervisor and was key in helping us figure out these transition points that her team blended with VFX in post-production.”

The result is a lovely little glimpse into how drones can extend beyond the customary establishing shot and take a deeper storytelling role in the process.

“I know that the future for droning is very bright, and I anticipate that we’ll start to see drones used in ways that don’t immediately give away their ‘drone-ness,’ like to feign camera movements that would otherwise be difficult to achieve,” says Acopian. “You don’t have to be high to fly! Drones, especially FPV drones, have this fluidity to them that beautifully mirrors the way memories feel to me and I’m excited to see more people play with this to recreate the inner experience so many of us have in a new, relatable way.”

Brian Heat | 31 May 2020

Drone firm Zipline has been given the go-ahead to deliver medical supplies and personal protective equipment to hospitals in North Carolina.

The firm will be allowed to use drones on two specified routes after the Federal Aviation Administration granted it an emergency waiver.

It is the first time the FAA has allowed beyond-line-of-sight drone deliveries in the US.

Experts say the pandemic could help ease some drone-flight regulations.

Zipline, which has been negotiating with the FAA, wants to expand to other hospitals and eventually offer deliveries to people's homes.

It has been granted a waiver for two routes involving round trips of up to 30 miles (48km).

The drones will launch from a nearby fulfilment centre and drop off a box of medical products by parachute at a designated spots. The drones can carry up to almost 4lb (1.8kg) of cargo and can fly at up to 80mph, even in rain or wind.

"The Covid-19 pandemic has tasked us with being even more nimble and innovative in how to solve complex challenges," said Angela Yochem, chief digital officer of Novant Health, which is the partner for the service.

"Fast-tracking our medical drone transport capability is just one example of how we're pioneering in the health care industry, which is known for being resistant to change,"

Zipline has struggled to find a commercial foothold in the US market, but chief executive Keller Rinaudo said he hoped the North Carolina example could "provide the rest of the country with a blueprint" for future healthcare deliveries.

The pandemic has prompted a handful of new drone deliveries.

The Windracers Ultra fixed-wing drone has been delivering PPE from Hampshire to the Isle of Wight - a 10-minute journey - and in Ireland, Manna Aero is working with the health authority to deliver prescriptions and other essential supplies to a small rural town.

Robotics expert Prof Noel Sharkey believes the pandemic could make drone deliveries more common.

"In a global pandemic everything changes," he said.

"Rules and laws need to be manipulated and restrictions lifted to enable the use of all possible technological advantages to save large numbers of lives.

"The problem of course is how to wind back the clock on tech once we are out of the Covid-19 crisis."

BCC | 27 May 2020

Is evolution the best inventor? With hundreds of millions of years of work and the natural world as its canvas, it would seem so.

From the water-retaining camels of the desert to the long-flying albatrosses of the sea, evolution has shaped the abilities of animals to best help them survive and thrive.

My graduate research explores some of evolution’s most impressive inventions, many of which can be found in birds. Specifically, I study bird flight behaviours and how relationships between body mass, wing sizes, species relatedness and other biological traits have evolved to generate the extravagant flight we see in many species.

These inventions are so extraordinary that we study them to apply their design in everyday technology.

Take, for example, the swift and precise flight of a hummingbird that has helped us develop flying devices that are also capable of intricate manoeuvre. Or an owl’s stealthy flight, which has informed the design of silent and efficient wind turbines. In both cases, biomimicry draws inspiration from natural inventions to design and improve upon our current technologies.

Precise maneuvers

Hummingbirds are some of the tiniest birds in the world. They possess small, lightweight torsos with relatively large wings that allow them to fly remarkably fast with incredible precision. But many types of birds have large wings, so what sets hummingbirds apart when it comes to their amazing manoeuvrability?

The secret lies within their muscles and bones.

Hummingbirds require large wing muscles to continually flap their wings quickly during flight, known as a high wing beat frequency. High wing beat frequency allows hummingbirds to perform their unique hovering flight, especially during their summer visits to your flowers and backyard feeders.

Hummingbirds need large amounts of energy to fly continuously and gather food. Additionally, the adaptation of a long chest bone is the perfect surface needed for wing muscles: the larger the surface of the chest bone, the more muscle can be connected.

In order to hover, hummingbirds flap their wings in the shape of a figure eight. This wing beat style is made possible by continuous “wrist flicks” from their shortened arm bone — a unique characteristic not found in any other bird species. By working together, the muscles and bones of hummingbirds allow for hovering and sideways and backwards flight at speeds that top 50 km/hr.

When scientists looked at how the muscles and bones of hummingbirds come together to generate fast, precise flight in these tiny birds, they became interested in whether these same mechanisms could be engineered.

An example of this inspiration is AeroVironment’s Nano Hummingbird, developed as a prototype for the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The Nano Hummingbird is a drone device that mimics the flight of hummingbirds to gain an agile, manoeuvrable edge.

These drones can access unreachable locations and gather information via an attached video camera. With more research on hummingbird flight precision and its everyday implications, having drones that can effectively examine natural uncharted territories might happen sooner than previously believed. These drone advancements can be applied to weather monitoring, parcel shipping and even cinematography.

Silent flight

As nighttime predators, owls rely on their silent hunting tactics to successfully capture prey. To take off in flight requires a great amount of lift force to get off the ground, and more energy is needed to stay in the air. Generating this lift force, however, requires owls to flap their large wings. You might think that flapping such large wings would make a ton of noise, defeating the purpose of being stealthy. But does it?

During flight, the movement of a bird’s wings creates turbulence in the air, which makes that familiar flapping sound. However, owls have evolved incredible mechanisms that reduce noise during flight. The secret lies within their feather structures.

Owl wings have feathers with sharp edges, called serrations, along their fronts, which are in contact with the air during flight. These serrations break up the air turbulence that normally causes wind noise, reducing the noise generated during flight. As air flows to the back of the wing, fringe-like structures — similar to the fashion trend — at the end of the feathers further reduce noise by quickly and effectively dispersing any turbulence. Paired with gliding flight, these two feather structures strongly contribute to an owl’s quiet hunt.

Taking a page from the silent flight adaptations in owls, researchers are attempting to use similar turbulence-disrupting structures to reduce the noise produced by wind turbines and fans and improve their efficiency.

Applying the owl’s silent feather adaptations to modern turbine technology promises more efficient conversion of wind energy, and highlights how effective it can be to integrate our natural and technological worlds.

Scratching the surface

The adaptations of hummingbird and owl flight only scratch the surface of nature’s inventions. Additional forms of biomimicry can be found in concussion-preventing technologies inspired by woodpeckers, train designs shaped from the beaks of kingfishers and laser technology influenced by the architecture of colourful bird feathers.

It is clear to see how nature has inspired advancements in technology, and the importance of continuing exploration of these wonderful natural systems on Earth.The Conversation

Ilias Berberi, PhD Student, Biology, Carleton University  |  May 2020

Gearing Up Towards a Drone-Powered Economy

Some trends have the capacity of turning into mega trends and bringing about a dramatic shift in the economy as we know it. UAVs have managed to do that in a rather short period of time.

From being considered as mere "toys of the hobbyists", "flying cameras of the rich," or the "clandestine military operative machines," drones have further penetrated vast areas of our economy and are starting to become a major part of our everyday lives. Unimaginable uses of drones are coming to life every single day and their evolution is only going to surge with time.

Business tech buffs globally are trying to get a slice of this rapidly growing trend's pie. The drone services market size is expected to grow from $4.4 billion in 2018 to $63.6 billion by 2025.

For a budding entrepreneur, owning a drone in this day and age is a latent business opportunity just waiting to be explored and exploited. For opportunistic businesspeople, drones have multiple uses and can be explored and utilized in a variety of ways. 

Before getting started with a drone-related business, it is fundamental to check local regulations on the commercial use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Some countries already have introduced strict regulations that limit the use of drones. 

How to Get Started with a Drone Business

Before you decide to take the plunge into the intriguing world of drones and the business opportunities ascribed with them, the very first steps are to enroll in an CASA-approved aeronautical training program to get a Remote Pilot Licence and then the Remote Operator's Certificate, which is a prerequisite to be able to commercially conduct a full-fledged drone business. You can enrol with an accredited pilot on Drones for Hire, which helps fledgling drone pilots get the appropriate training. 

The potential business opportunities with drones are extensive. Below, we've listed some of the ways people are breaking into the drone business.

One-man Aerial Film Unit (Filmmaking)

With basic knowledge of operating video cameras and piloting drones, people can produce in-house documentaries, short films, video snippets and montages that would otherwise require helicopters to shoot. Moreover, drones are cheaper, more maneuverable, and safer than helicopters.  

Individuals and large enterprise consumers can also pursue a wedding and special events photography business with drones. Owning a drone can be the ultimate start to a freelance business of commercial photography and videography, which could prove to be a secondary or even a primary source of income.

Drone Photography Business

Aerial photography accounts for one of the largest shares of the drone services market. A variety of markets look to aerial photography for collecting digital data. For example, the architecture, oil & gas, and civil engineering industries rely on drone photography for data collection and assets management.

Agriculture Manning/Inspection Business

Farmers can use UAVs for pest and blight identification, crop health, and weed identification. Drones in action

Farmers can reduce the variable cost of manually getting their farms inspected, as drones can reach niche areas in half the amount of time that manual labor would take. Farmers can also use UAVs for pest and blight identification, crop health and weed identification, and agriculture applications such as fertilizer, pesticides, and water distribution.

Mapping and Industrial Inspection Business

With a geo-referenced map, areas and objects can be easily measured and quantified with drones, which otherwise would take a ground survey team several days to cover. Architects, construction site owners, mining engineers, shipping and infrastructure professionals, and more can be potential customers for a drone inspection business.

Drone Repair Service Business

In most budding industries, there is a corresponding requirement of maintenance and repair jobs. With the escalating use of drones worldwide, and with associated probable military and domestic drone crashes, a good drone repair service is never going to be devoid of work.

Repairing drones may not sound like the most revolutionary business opportunity in the field, but it could be a great way to undercut the market and grow quickly in this particular niche — using 3D printing to lower costs.

Drone Professional Courses Provider Business

As the interest around drone uses and operations increases, more tech buffs can benefit from the teachings of professional pilots, drone tech experts and makers. Drone flying courses usually involve theoretical and practical sessions. Students can be taught the basic maneuvers and safe use of drones to take pictures or capture footage. Offering students licenses and certifications can also be offered as part of the courses by authorized instructors.

Small Business Delivery

Drones can deliver everyday supplies and perform minor functions that can lower operational costs. Uber

Keeping in tandem with local rules and laws, small businesses can benefit immensely from drones. Drones can deliver everyday supplies, repair materials, commodities, and perform minor functions that can lower operational costs for small businesses considerably. Elimination of middle men and labor for menial work (such as deliveries and pickups) can help boost the bottom line of many businesses across the globe.

Drone Advertising and Marketing Business

Drones have yet another unusual function of intelligence gathering and data mining for businesses. As an example, one of retail's largest players, Walmart, is testing how drones could help improve warehouse inventory management.

Apart from this, drones can be used for marketing campaigns by carrying advertising banners and shooting aerial footage campaigns, maximizing exposure for companies.

Real Estate Drone Business 

The real estate market is an emerging opportunity for drone technology. Drones have the ability to generate video tours for customers interested in property. Soaring through halls and over rooftops, drones provide customers with an immersive experience. 

In addition to the above, some other drone business opportunities to look into are:

• Commercial Inspection Services: Bridges, cell and TV towers, wind turbines, power lines, pipelines, and even solar panels.
• Fast Food Delivery: Big companies such as Domino's Pizza will be looking to invest in drones for pizza delivery in the future.
• Package Delivery: Australia Post and Amazon are already investing in drone technology as a way of delivering packages.
• Residential Home Inspections: Check roofs, chimneys, siding, brick, and other structures for exterior damage.
• Drone Delivery Methods: Solve the "last 50 feet dilemma" by developing a method for delivery, such as drop, parachute, hoist, or landing.
• Software Programming/Applications: If you know something particular the drone market is lacking, then invest in creating an app for it.

Written by Divya Joshi  |  29 Jan, 2020

On paper, DJI's Mavic Air 2 consumer drone hits all the right marks. It records 4K video, can take up to 48MP photos, has a 34-minute flight time and a 6.2-mile range, and is priced at just $1493.

The Air 2 is a big upgrade over the $599 Mavic Mini, the entry-level drone we reviewed late last year.

You can buy the Mavic Air 2 right now for $1493, or pay a little extra and get the Fly More Combo at the Drones for Hire online store that includes extra batteries and accessories.

After flying the Air 2 for a while, we're feeling inspired to get outside more often and push the Air 2 to its limits. Just, you know, not too far. Let's take a closer look at the Air 2 and what it has to offer.

What's in the box?

Included in the $1493 basic bundle is the Air 2, a battery, the controller, battery charger, three sets of propellers, and all of the necessary cables to charge or connect the controller to your phone. It doesn't matter what kind of phone or tablet you own, the kit includes Lightning, USB-C and micro USB cables to ensure you can connect.

The Fly More Combo, however, is the way to go. For $1936, you get all of the above, plus two more batteries, three more propeller sets, a charging cradle, a carrying case, ND filters for the camera (a handy way to control exposure), and a battery-to-power-bank adapter that lets you use an Air 2 battery to charge your phone while on the go.

The difference in cost is more than made up for in batteries alone. A battery for the Air 2 by itself is $199, and then the battery charging hub is another $99. Including everything else in the Fly More Combo, that's nearly $600 worth of accessories you get for less than $420!

Overall design

The Air 2 is roughly the size of a brick when it's folded up (180 by 97 by 84 millimeters, about 7 by 4 by 3 inches). When it's unfolded, its wingspan increases its width, so it's 183 by 252 by 77 millimeters (about 7 by 10 by 3 inches) when open. It weighs 570 grams (1.26 pounds), meaning you'll need to register it with the Federal Aviation Administration before your first flight.

The four motors are mounted on arms that fold out of the Air 2's body. The battery makes up the majority of the top of the Air 2 and is easily removed by pressing the buttons on either side of the pack. On the left side of the Air 2 is a USB-C port for charging or transferring photos and videos to your computer. On the right side is a micro SD card slot that will work with cards up to 256GB. The Air 2 has 8GB of internal storage, should you forget your card.

On the front is a three-axis gimbal that holds the new 1/2-inch sensor capable of shooting 48MP or 12MP photos, recording 4K video at up to 60 frames per second, and creating HyperLapse videos at up to 8K resolution.

The controller has a USB-C port on the bottom for charging and is centered between two compartments that hold the removable joysticks for safe storage. On the top are indicator lights for battery level, a dedicated return-to-home button, a switch for various flying modes, the power button, joysticks, and two more dedicated buttons. One is programmable and can do things like switch between gimbal positions with a quick press. The other button switches between shooting modes.

On the top of the controller is the phone holder and antenna, along with a gimbal control and shutter button.

The bottom of the controller has a contoured shape that is easy to grip, and even with a OnePlus 8 Pro phone connected to the controller for an extended period of time, it never felt heavy or unbalanced.

The Mavic Air 2 is packed with fancy features

DJI has packed a ton of features into the Air 2. Some features are staples for DJI (and its competitors), like the automated video modes such as Rocket, Circle and Dronie, which allow you to record short clips with the drone flying up and away, or in a big circle, while keeping you in the center of the shot. Other features — like AirSense, which uses signals emitted from every airplane and helicopter to warn drone pilots of nearby aircraft and even show them in real time on a map in the DJI Fly app — make the Air 2 feel futuristic.

On our last night of testing, we received an alert that an aircraft was nearby. A helicopter was flying to a hospital a couple of miles away, and the DJI Fly app not only started beeping to warn us, but it placed an aircraft icon on the map, showing us exactly where the helicopter was and which direction it was heading. A few minutes later, we received another alert stating it was in flight again. We were only flying about 20 feet off the ground, so neither our drone nor the helicopter was at risk of a collision, but knowing that an aircraft is nearby and its location is sure to help many drone pilots. Currently, the Air 2 is the only consumer drone from DJI that has this feature built in.

Adding to its futuristic feel is its ability to follow a subject using ActiveTrack 3.0 and to avoid objects without stopping or forcing the pilot to take over. The Air 2 has sensors on the front, rear and bottom that are used to monitor its surroundings.

In the animated image above, we weren't flying. Well, we were, but we weren't pushing the joysticks. We simply selected the person on the bike as an object for the drone to follow and pressed Record. In fact, we didn't even realize the tree was in the drone's path until after it went under the branches (admittedly, we were looking at a settings page and not the drone). It wasn't until later that we realized the Air 2 had not only perfectly followed the bike but avoided the branches with zero hesitation or delay.

You can also highlight stationary objects for the Air 2 to film, and then prompt it to fly in a circle, or to allow you to control its flight while it keeps the object centered in the frame. Our initial attempts at having the Air 2 fly around a water tower failed, with the Air 2 losing the object and picking something else nearby to circle instead. However, after experimenting with selecting a subject, we realized that the bigger of a target area you give the Air 2 to focus on, the better the results.

To be clear, the Air 2 isn't an autonomous drone, by any means. And even though what it's capable of doing is impressive, it's nowhere near as impressive as what the Skydio 2 can do, thanks to its extra cameras, sensors and overall technological approach. But for someone who doesn't need to push the limits and have a drone follow you through a dense forest, the Air 2's capabilities will suffice.

Performance, battery life, and distance

The Air 2 is fast, responsive and incredibly fun to fly. There are three flight modes: Tripod, Normal, and Sport. Tripod mode slows the drone down, ensuring you record smooth video. Normal is the default mode that combines speed with steadiness. Sport mode turns off automatic object avoidance, and in turn enables you to fly at up to 68 kph (42.25 mph). Zippy indeed!

With last year's Mavic Mini, one of our complaints about the controller was the placement of the phone bracket below the joysticks. But with the Air 2's controller, the controller's antenna doubles as a mounting bracket, placing the phone above the controls, making it easier to keep an eye on the drone, interact with the screen to change shooting modes, and keep the joysticks within reach at all times.

Using OcuSync 2.0, the Air 2 and its controller have an HD video transmission range of 10 kilometers (6.2 miles). We weren't able — let alone brave enough — to test the full range, but we did fly the Air 2 to a landmark that's exactly 1 mile away without any hiccups or transmission issues, despite being in an area with plenty of homes and Wi-Fi networks.

OcuSync 2.0 uses 2.4GHz and 5.8GHz frequencies, auto-switching between the two frequencies to ensure the strongest connection at all times. In other words, the Air 2 avoids the problems of the Mavic Mini, which suffered from Wi-Fi interference issues in populated areas.

According to DJI, the Air 2's flight time should be 34 minutes when moving, or 33 minutes when just hovering. That's an incredible amount of time for it to fly around looking for something to video or take photos of and then fly back to you without feeling rushed.

We tested in Colorado with an elevation around 4,700 feet and were consistently able to get 29 minutes of flight time out of the Air 2. Flight time is lower at higher altitudes in general, so we're happy with that result. Recharging the battery takes about two hours.

Picture and video quality

We're really impressed with the Air 2's photo and video quality. Photos taken at both 12MP and 48MP are clear, crisp and sharp. However, we found the 12MP shots to look better in nearly every comparison set we captured. It looks as if the 12MP photos are applying some sort of HDR effect and doing a better job at capturing darker colors, while not overexposing whites.

Admittedly, we're talking about subtle differences between the two shooting modes, but once you see it, it's hard not to notice.

We were also pleased with the 4K, 2.7K, and 1080p video we recorded during our various flights. Everything looked fantastic, with the most common response when we shared with friends and loved ones being "I can't believe how clear the picture is." Same, fam.

The HyperLapse feature is something we looked forward to testing, and it lived up to our hopes as long as we shot in 1080p. DJI has enabled 8K HyperLapse videos, and they record fine, but we ran into issues viewing them on a Mac or PC. Instead of showing the total video, there are two gray boxes in the corners of the video. We tried processing the short clip using DaVinci Resolve, but that only made the problem worse. Eventually, we found an entry on the Air 2's FAQ page that recommends SPlayer on Mac or PotPlayer on Windows for viewing 8K HyperLapse videos. Sure enough, it works and the videos can be viewed without issue.

However, that doesn't solve the problem of the gray squares when you do something like uploading video to Facebook or sharing it on another social network.

In other words, don't get the Air 2 if you want to use it solely for 8K HyperLapse videos, unless you have all of the necessary video processing apps and programs. You're better off shooting them in 1080p.

Bottom Line

The Air 2 is an incredibly fun drone to fly, with impressive smarts combined with even better photo and video quality. At $1493, it's double the cost of the Mavic Mini, a drone DJI created for beginners.

The Air 2 is a fantastic step up from the Mini, and it provides some peace of mind with its built-in safety features that make it an attractive option for beginners.

Just do yourself a favor and get the Fly More Combo. It's worth the extra cost.

By Jason Cipriani  |  15 May, 2020

Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) has once again stated that its mandatory drone registration and pilot accreditation will open later on this year, on September 30. It was originally set to open last month, but was deferred due to COVID-19.

The new drone registration and pilot accreditation will require everyone using a drone for commercial purposes, flying for hire or reward, to complete the registration and become accredited via an online test starting on September 30.

The move comes as Australia continues to focus on regulating drone flights and limiting the number of people flying illegally without understanding the rules in place.

For now, only commercial operations will have to register, with registration for recreational drone pilots expected to commence sometime in 2022. The price of the registration is unknown at this point.

Registration

Registration will require applicants to be at least 16 years old, have proof of identification, have an aviation reference number (ARN), provide information on the drone, and provide a form of payment. The registration will be completed via the applicant’s myCASA account. This will have to be renewed every 12 months.

Accreditation

Accreditation will require applicants to watch a short online video on basic rules of flying drones in Australia, and then pass a quiz. Accreditation will last for three years and must be renewed to continue flying.

Q&A

Do I need to register if I sell prints or digital photos?

Yes. It’s fine to post photos or videos to Instagram or another sharing site. But once you accept payment for prints or digital copies you are required to register your drone and become accredited.

Do I need to notify CASA before flying?

Yes. You will have to notify CASA of when, where, and the intent of your flight before taking to the skies. This ensures you won’t encounter any problems while flying and provides a way for CASA to keep a record of the commercial flight.

Do I need to keep a flight log?

The simple answer is yes. If you are flying in the excluded category (sub 2kg) you will only be required to keep an operational flight log. This includes location, height flown, type, model, and ID of the drone, along with the date and time of the flight, the reason for flying, and if the drone is still operational by the end of the flight. This record must be kept for three years.

If you are flying a drone heavier than 2kg commercially you will be required keep the operational log along with a technical flight log for seven years, and a remote pilot flight log for three years. The technical log requires you to record full maintenance and total flight time of the drone, similar to how a service record is kept on a car. This allows CASA to check it at any time and allows a future buyer to ensure the drone is safe. The remote pilot log requires you to record how much time you’ve had flying the drone, the information of the drone, and flight data, similar to the operational flight log.

 

Let us know if you have any other questions about the drone registration and pilot accreditation.

By Josh Spires  |  7 May, 2020

Based on information relayed by a Swiss start-up, the owner of a sugar mill in India tells local cane farmers it’s almost time to harvest their crop. This is the brave new world of smart farming: integrating advanced technologies such as remote sensing, big data, artificial intelligence and robotics into everyday farm management.  

The information provided to the sugar mill owner came from Gamaya, a spin-off of Lausanne’s Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), which applies its own crop and region-specific algorithms to satellite imagery. Gamaya teamed up with India’s largest tractor manufacturer Mahindra & Mahindra last year in a deal worth CHF4.3 million ($4.4 million).

Drones and satellites have become a popular tool for farmers to survey their lands and generate crop data with the help of agritech companies. Gamaya uses different kinds of image-gathering technology depending on the site, such as special drone-mounted cameras to assess crop status.

“Mounted on a drone, our hyperspectral camera captures very rich images,” says Thomas Peyrachon of Gamaya. The camera can capture 40 different bands of light, he explains, compared to three in standard cameras. That allows it to detect subtle variations in light reflected on the plant and read its condition.

A hyperspectral camera image of a barley field.

Less is more

Between 20 and 40% of the world’s grain harvest is currently lost to pests and disease, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization. Meanwhile, the average farm can generate half a million data points per day, everything from soil temperature to individual milk yields to the presence of pests in a crop. 

When this information is converted into sound advice, farmers can operate in a much more precise way, using fewer resources. Even in one field of maize, for example, there may be different patches that need replanting, or the application of fertiliser, pesticides, herbicides or fungicides at a given time. 

This change towards micro-managing farms with sophisticated information while reducing their ecological footprint has been referred to as the Fourth Agricultural Revolution. The so-called agritech sector is experiencing a boom worldwide and promoting innovation and digitalisation in agriculture is one of the stated aims of Switzerland’s new agriculture strategy for 2022–2025. 

Centralised 

“There is plenty of research activity in all directions. We hope to build Switzerland up to become a strong hub, especially for data capturing and data analytics, where we have a lot of expertise,” says Roland Siegwart, professor for autonomous mobile robots at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETHZ). He previously worked with Gamaya on a project in Ukraine involving the European Space Agency.

Gamaya is currently focusing on the Brazilian sugarcane and soybean markets, since large-scale farming countries like Brazil and the United States are looking to agritech companies for help with drone and satellite imagery. In sugarcane, where some farms are up to 100,000 hectares in size, the Swiss start-up has developed a solution to detect planting gaps with its drone detectors. 

Gaps on the ground are one of the major causes of yield loss due to the perennial nature of the crop. When the gaps are identified, the grower can replant in the most problematic areas.

Apart from gathering data or spraying crops from the air, there are also developments taking place at ground level, with autonomous robotic vehicles being developed for various tasks such as weeding, the application of fertiliser or fruit harvesting. 

At the ETHZ’s research station for plant sciences in Eschikon, outside of Zurich, scientists are testing machines that can intervene in the field. Ten engineering students on a teaching project have been tasked to construct a robot that will go through beet fields and find and destroy weeds. The prototypes are due to be ready in May or June. 

Listening to plants

Another Swiss start-up, Vivent in the French-speaking canton of Vaud, is taking a novel approach to analysing plants by monitoring and interpreting biosignals.

The company has developed a sensor which is attached to a plant, for example a greenhouse-grown tomato. Plants emit different signals depending on the stress or stimulus, as co-founder Carrol Plummer explains. 

“We can interpret plant signals to detect different crop conditions. For instance, we can tell whether the plant is being attacked by a chewing or sucking insect or whether it has a fungal infection or a nutrient deficiency. The grower can then respond to this information.”

The signals are processed in a similar way to how automatic voice recognition software works. “We record the signals when the plant is healthy, stressed or stimulated and use artificial intelligence to interpret the signals. It’s akin to learning a language.”

Vivent has received funding to continue working on two new projects with Agroscope, the Swiss federal body for agriculture research. With the wealth of information and new systems now available to farmers, including a plethora of farm management apps, the challenge at this point is to match farms with the right technology package. It may well be that the next growth area in smart farming is consultancy. 

By Clare O'Dea  |  20 April, 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic is, by necessity, leading to a flurry of innovation. And now drones are taking their turn in the limelight.

In a recent announcement, the UK government said that unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) could be ferrying vital personal protective equipment (PPE) from the English mainland to NHS staff on the Isle of Wight as soon as early May. The Windracers Ultra fixed-wing drones, which can transport 100kg for over 600 miles, should be able to make the crossing in ten to 15 minutes.

This is just one example of the radical technological change that is being nodded through to help meet the unprecedented challenge of COVID-19.

The usefulness of drones to the medical sector has been clear for several years, and many well-funded start-ups have been trialling services globally.

In developed countries, where road infrastructure is good, airspace regulation is strict, and health services have well-established logistics networks, companies have struggled to get much traction. The company Matternet’s trial in Switzerland was a rare success – ferrying medical lab samples between hospitals in Lugano aboard multi-rotor drones – though even that has had teething troubles.

Instead, most of the innovation has taken place in developing countries – where the need is more acute, and the barriers more surmountable – with Zipline making progress in several African countries. The company’s service uses fixed-wing drones to drop packages, including blood, to rural areas with poor roads.

So this new trial marks a welcome departure for the UK.

At Nesta, we’ve been exploring the future of drones in the UK for the past two-and-a-half years. We’ve also looked into a number of hypothetical uses for drones – coincidentally, including the transport of medical items across the Solent, the body of water between mainland Britain and the Isle of Wight.

What we found suggests that this trial is likely to have positive implications that last beyond the coronavirus crisis. Not only will it perform a valuable public service now, but it will also help dismantle some of the barriers that lie in the path of wider drone adoption.

Getting technical

In a 2018 report, we found that there is already some enthusiasm for public service drone use. But there are three broad problems that need to be worked through before they become commonplace.

The first is technical, involving the development of safe, long-distance flight (or “beyond visual line of sight” in industry lingo), autonomous piloting and precision flight. These rest on developing and improving communications networks and low-altitude air traffic management.

The government’s industrial strategy project, the Future Flight Challenge, includes over £100 million of public money for research and development into drones and other aerospace technologies.

But long distance drone flights across the Solent will be a great test case that builds a track record, helps generate data and boosts confidence in the technology. The government’s recently announced funding for other coronavirus-related programmes, including for drones, should help generate further innovation in the field.

Collaboration is key

The second issue is the lack of alignment. There are many drone companies with innovative ideas. In our 2018 survey of the industry, we found over 700 in the UK – and there would be many more now. There are also organisations that are trying them out, construction companies and infrastructure owners, in particular.

But in our research, and in subsequent workshops we held with innovators and potential customers in 2019, we found that people who should be talking to each other often aren’t. Government and regulation have been moving slowly, without learning lessons from industry. Technology developers aren’t involving end users, such as local councils or NHS hospitals, in their research and development. And in turn, those potential users often aren’t taking the risk of paying for pilot drone programmes.

But there is movement in the right direction. The Civil Aviation Authority’s innovation team has transformed the regulator’s approach over the past two years. It has set up an initiative to help firms with innovative ideas navigate the complex rules around safety and gain the permissions they need.

And this trial drone service will be a welcome addition, creating tangible evidence of how a drone service can benefit the NHS and forge links between the NHS, drone companies and regulators.

Public support

And then there’s the public. Does the public actually want drones? For what purposes? And operated by whom?

When we investigated this, we found strong support for the public service use of drones, and more suspicion around commercial or hobbyist use. But public opinion is still forming, which is hardly surprising as drones are not widely used and most people have not yet had to think about them.

But that will change as drones become more widespread. And the questions that will arise are not ones with right or wrong answers; they’re about values and priorities. The drone industry needs to engage with the public on this, not in a superficial way but to learn from them as much as educate them about the potential benefits.

The NHS trial won’t hurt. In fact, having a real-world case study like this might make these conversations less abstract. But the extraordinary circumstances of the coronavirus pandemic – during which the public has enthusiastically embraced economic and public health measures more extreme than any in living history – isn’t representative of normal times. And drones operating in city centres, rather than over the sea, are far more likely to cause controversy.

For now, however, we need to move fast. Engaging the public and finding out what they really think will need to come later, when the fierce urgency of the crisis is over and we can all take a more dispassionate view of the future.

Olivier Usher | 1 May 2020