High winds, rocky terrain, salt water and seabirds can make flying on the
Oregon Coast challenging, even dangerous under the best of circumstances. For a
team of researchers from the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University these conditions represent the ideal
laboratory for testing unmanned or “drone” aircraft.
Drone
aircraft being developed at Embry-Riddle will be deployed from Cape Kiwanda
State Natural Area July 26-27 in an attempt to photograph double-crested
cormorants nesting on Haystock Rock near Pacific City.
Double-crested cormorants are large
seabirds that inhabit Oregon’s estuaries during the spring and summer.
Cormorants, which can eat up to two pounds of fish per day, have been identified
by sportsmen’s groups and others as a potential threat to the outbound migration
of salmon and steelhead. ODFW is monitoring the cormorants at Haystack Rock as
part of a broader population study to find out what impact the birds may have on
migratory fish. Cormorants are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act,
so extra care must be used to ensure the birds are not unduly
disturbed.
“Our hope is
that with unmanned aircraft we will be able to do a better job of monitoring the
cormorant colonies,” said Lindsay Adrean, ODFW’s avian predation coordinator.
Currently, the department relies on aerial photos generated once a year by
manned flights along the entire Oregon coast contracted by the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service. “It would be nice to be able to get this kind of information
week-to-week and we think UAVs may give us that
capability.”
UAVS are not
only less expensive to buy and operate, but they are safer as well because they
do not require onboard crew.
“We
potentially see numerous applications for this technology,” said Adrean,
including waterfowl, elk and fishing surveys.
The project
on the Oregon coast will be the first of its kind for UAV research at
Embry-Riddle, according to Patrick Currier, assistant professor of mechanical
engineering, who will be traveling with four students and two drone aircraft
from the university’s Daytona Beach, Florida campus to Cape Kiwanda.
Currier said
the primary UAV is made of Expanded Polypropylene (EPP), weighs about six
pounds, has a wingspan of 54 inches, is powered by a small electric motor, and
is equipped with an autonomous control system. It is based on a radio-controlled
aircraft known as the Ritewing Zephyr II.
“We’ve never
used the UAV to fly over water with the kinds of wind shear and rock you have on
the Oregon coast,” said Currier. “Our goal is to prove the feasibility of the
project so we can further develop a system that doesn’t take a whole crew of
engineers to use it.”
The aircraft
will be launched from the beach with a catapult made of PVC and will fly
autonomously along flight paths plotted ahead of time with GPS coordinates in
the restricted airspace around Haystack Rock. The flights will be monitored on a
laptop computer, with a radio-control pilot standing by to take over the
aircraft is something goes wrong. The craft is equipped with an Android
smartphone that will take photographs at preset intervals and save the images
with their respective GPS coordinates. The students have named the craft
“Androne,” playing on the words “Android” phone and “drone”
aircraft.
Currier
estimates the cost of the aircraft is between $500 and
$1,000.
“That’s why
we’re doing it with the smartphone, so people who need it can actually afford
it,” he said. It remains to be seen whether the smartphone will produce usable
pictures.
Currier said
he will consider the project a success if his team can get the plane into the
air, make a couple of flights around Haystack Rock, and get back to the beach
with photos that Adrean can use to count cormorants.
“Drones have
been getting a lot of bad press, lately, and we’d like to help change that,”
Currier said. “We want to prove these drones are very useful in applications
beyond the military and law enforcement.”
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