Imagine a drone that doesn’t just fly but also walks, hops, and jumps like a bird. Sounds like something out of a sci-fi movie, right? Well, thanks to some brilliant minds at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland, this is now a reality. Let’s dive into the fascinating world of bird-inspired drones and see how these innovative machines are changing the game.

The Inspiration Behind Bird Drones

Birds are nature’s ultimate aviators. They can soar through the skies, perch on branches, and even walk on the ground with ease. This versatility inspired researchers at EPFL to create a drone that mimics these abilities. The result? The RAVEN drone, which stands for Robotic Avian-inspired Vehicle for multiple Environments.

What Makes RAVEN Special?

Unlike traditional drones that rely solely on propellers for movement, RAVEN is equipped with legs that allow it to walk, hop, and jump. These legs are not just for show—they’re designed to store and release energy, much like a bird’s tendons and muscles. This means RAVEN can take off from the ground with a powerful jump, just like a crow.

Walking and Hopping: Why Bother?

You might wonder why a drone needs to walk or hop when it can fly. The answer lies in efficiency and versatility. Flying consumes a lot of energy, and sometimes it’s just easier to walk. For instance, if a drone needs to move short distances on the ground or navigate through tight spaces, walking can be more practical. Plus, the ability to hop over obstacles or jump to take off makes RAVEN incredibly adaptable.

Real-World Applications

So, where can we see these bird-inspired drones in action? Here are a few exciting possibilities:

Search and Rescue: In disaster-stricken areas, drones like RAVEN can navigate through rubble and debris, reaching places that are inaccessible to humans or traditional drones. Their ability to walk and hop over obstacles makes them perfect for these challenging environments.

Agriculture: Imagine a drone that can walk through fields, inspect crops up close, and then take off to get an aerial view. This could revolutionize how farmers monitor and manage their crops, leading to more efficient and sustainable farming practices.

Urban Delivery: In bustling cities, drones often face challenges like narrow streets and crowded areas. A drone that can walk and hop could navigate these urban jungles more effectively, delivering packages right to your doorstep.

The Future of Bird-Inspired Drones

The development of RAVEN is just the beginning. Researchers are already looking into ways to make these drones even more bird-like. Future versions might have flapping wings for more efficient flight or enhanced legs for better ground mobility. The possibilities are endless, and the potential applications are vast.

Bird-inspired drones like RAVEN are pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in drone technology. By mimicking the versatile movements of birds, these drones offer a glimpse into a future where drones are not just flying machines but multi-functional tools capable of navigating complex environments with ease. Whether it’s for search and rescue, agriculture, or urban delivery, the sky’s the limit for these innovative machines.

So next time you see a bird hopping around, take a moment to appreciate the incredible design of nature—and the exciting ways we’re learning to emulate it.

Source: IEEE Spectrum

I hope you enjoyed this lighthearted look at the future of bird-inspired drones! If you have any questions or want to learn more, feel free to ask.

Months after PM Narendra Modi launched the Drone Sister programme, women from various parts of India are participating in it, and touching the skies as they create farming and social changes. An AFP report mentions exactly how the Drone Sisters of India are contributing to the changes.

One such woman who took part in the scheme is Sharmila Yadav, a mother of two and a former homemaker, who is flying drones now. Once a housewife in rural India, Sharmila Yadav always wanted to be a pilot. She is now living her dream somewhat, remotely flying a heavy-duty drone across the skies to cultivate the country’s farmland.

Yadav, 35, is among hundreds of women trained to fly fertiliser-spraying aircraft under the government-backed “Drone Sister” programme.

The scheme aims to help modernise Indian farming by reducing labour costs, as well as saving time and water in an industry hamstrung by its reliance on outdated technology and growing climate change challenges.

It is also a portent of rural India’s changing attitudes towards working women, who have traditionally found few opportunities to join the labour force and are often stigmatised for doing so.

“Earlier, it was difficult for women to step out of the house. They were supposed to do only household chores and look after the children,” said Yadav, a mother of two, after a day’s work crisscrossing a drone through the clear blue sky above a lush green field of young wheat stalks.

“Women who went out for work were looked down upon. They were taunted for neglecting their motherly duties. But now mindsets are changing gradually.”

Yadav was a homemaker for 16 years after marrying her farmer husband, with few job opportunities for women in her small rural hamlet near the town of Pataudi, a few hours’ drive from the capital, New Delhi.

She will pocket 50,000 rupees ($600) after spraying 150 acres (60 hectares) of farmland twice over five weeks, a little over double the average monthly income in her native Haryana state.

But she said her new occupation was not just a “source of income” for her. “I feel very proud when someone calls me a pilot. I have never sat in a plane, but I feel like I am flying one now,” she said.

Yadav is among the first batch of 300 women trained by the Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative Limited (IFFCO), the largest manufacturer of chemical fertilisers in the country.

The women trained as pilots are given the 30kg (66-pound) drones for free along with battery-run vehicles to transport them.

Other fertiliser companies have also joined the programme, which aims to train 15,000 “drone sisters” across the country.

“This scheme is not just about employment but also empowerment and rural entrepreneurship,” said Yogendra Kumar, the marketing director of IFFCO.

A little more than 41 percent of rural Indian women are in the formal workforce compared with 80 percent of rural men, according to a government survey last year.

Drones are part of an increasingly sophisticated arsenal used by scientists to understand forests and their role in the battle against climate change.

The basic premise is simple: Woodlands suck in and store carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas that is the largest contributor to climate change.

But how much they absorb is a complicated question.

A forest’s size is a key part of the answer — and deforestation has caused tree cover to fall 12% globally since 2000, according to Global Forest Watch.

But composition is also important: Different species sequester carbon differently, and trees’ age and size matter, too.

A drone conducts a forest restoration survey over a reforested area in Chiang Mai | AFP-JIJI

Knowing how much carbon forests store is crucial to understanding how quickly the world needs to cut emissions, and most current estimates mix high-level imagery from satellites with small, labor-intensive ground surveys.

“Normally, we would go into this forest, we would put in the pole, we would have our piece of string, 5 meters long. We would walk around in a circle, we would measure all the trees in a circle,” explained Stephen Elliott, research director at Chiang Mai University’s Forest Restoration Research Unit (FORRU).

But “if you’ve got 20 students stomping around with tape measures and poles … you’re going to trash the understory,” he said, referring to the layer of vegetation between the forest floor and the canopy.

That is where the drone comes in, he said, gesturing to the Phantom model hovering overhead.

“With this, you don’t set foot in the forest.”

Stephen Elliott, research director at Chiang Mai University’s Forest Restoration Research Unit | AFP-JIJI

Three measurements are needed to estimate a tree’s absorptive capacity: Height, girth and wood density, which differs by species.

As an assistant looks through binoculars for birds that might collide with the drone, the machine flies a path plotted into a computer program.

“We collect data or capture (images) every three seconds,” explained Worayut Takaew, a FORRU field research officer and drone operator.

“The overlapping images are then rendered into a 3D model that can be viewed from different angles.”

The patch of woodland being surveyed is part of a decadeslong project led by Elliott and his team that has reforested around 100 hectares by planting a handful of key species.

Their goal was not large-scale reforestation, but developing best practices: Planting native species, encouraging the return of animals that bring in seeds from other species and working with local communities.

A tablet displays the path of a drone to assist in forest mapping on a hillside near Chiang Mai. | AFP-JIJI

The drone’s 3D model is a potent visual representation of their success, particularly compared to straggly untouched control plots nearby.

But it is also being developed as a way to avoid labor-intensive ground surveys.

“Once you’ve got the model, you can measure the height of every tree in the model. Not samples, every tree,” said Elliott.

A forest’s carbon potential goes beyond its trees, though, with leaf litter and soil also serving as stores.

So these too are collected for analysis, which Elliott says shows their reforested plots store carbon at levels close to undamaged woodland nearby.

But for all its bird’s-eye insights, the drone has one major limitation: It cannot see below the canopy.

Field research officer Worayut Takaew demonstrates how a soil sample is collected for research on a hillside near Chiang Mai. | AFP-JIJI

For that, researchers need technology like LiDAR — high-resolution, remote-sensing equipment that effectively scans the whole forest.

“You can go inside the forest … and really reconstruct the shape and the size of each tree,” explained Emmanuel Paradis, a researcher at France’s National Research Institute for Sustainable Development.

He is leading a multiyear project to build the most accurate analysis yet of how much carbon Thailand’s forests can store.

It will survey five different types of forests, including some of FORRU’s plots, using drone-mounted LiDAR and advanced analysis of the microbes and fungi in soil that sustain trees.

“The aim is to estimate at the country level … how much carbon can be stored by one hectare anywhere in Thailand,” he said.

The stakes are high at a time of fierce debate about whether existing estimates of the world’s forest carbon capacity are right.

A picture of barren land before it was reforested on a hillside near Chiang Mai | AFP-JIJI

“Many people, and I’m a bit of this opinion, think that these estimates are not accurate enough,” Paradis said.

“Estimations which are too optimistic can give too much hope and too much optimism on the possibilities of forests to store carbon,” he warned.

The urgency of the question is driving fast developments, including the launch next year of the European Space Agency’s Biomass satellite, designed to monitor forest carbon stocks.

“The technology is evolving, the satellites are more and more precise … and the statistical technologies are more and more precise,” said Paradis.

Source

Rolf-Ole Rydeng Jenssen envisioned using his drone-mounted radar system to measure snowfall or forecast avalanches, once he perfected it to be able to penetrate multiple layers of snow. In subarctic Tromsø, Norway, where Jenssen works as an engineer at the multidisciplinary Norwegian Research Center (NORCE), both applications would be useful. However, one January evening, a team of scientists contacted NORCE to inquire about using the flying radar for a completely different purpose: locating polar bears that might be hiding.

In early winter, pregnant polar bears excavate holes in the snow, crawl inside, and allow new snow to cover the entrance. The bears give birth inside, protected from the harsh Arctic weather by the snow that covers them and their newborn cubs. Experts on polar bears are concerned that these creatures might be too skilled at hiding. For this reason, Jenssen received a call from scientists at Polar Bears International (PBI), a research and conservation organization. Since then, PBI and other engineers have been working together to develop more efficient methods for locating polar bear dens during aerial surveys before people trip over them and unintentionally destroy them.

In Alaska’s polar bear habitats, oil and gas companies move rigs and other equipment throughout the winter. According to Susannah Woodruff, a polar bear researcher with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, “over the past two years we’ve had four dens that we know of that were disturbed in the oil fields—all dens that were previously unknown before the bears just popped out.” The possibility of den disruptions rises with increased oil and gas exploration in the Arctic, increasing the risk of harm to cubs who are more susceptible. Furthermore, these young are extremely valuable for a species that is in danger of extinction, like polar bears.

Oil and gas companies are currently required by U.S. government policies to search their sites for bear dens to avoid disturbing them. However, the device that businesses usually use for this—known as a forward-looking infrared, or FLIR, system—detects an animal’s body heat through the snow and is limited to certain operating conditions. A polar bear’s heat signal is diminished by warm weather, and it is obscured by deep or blowing snow. Furthermore, using FLIR from an airplane is a bit like attempting to scan the landscape with a smartphone camera. Users will inevitably overlook patches.

“When we looked back at how management agencies and industry were doing using this tool, the answer was ‘not that great,’” says Geoff York, PBI’s senior director of research and policy. A 2020 study co-authored by York found that FLIR failed to spot 55 percent of polar bear dens. Part of the problem is that the best weather windows for FLIR—which works better during particularly long cold periods—are now fewer and farther between because of climate change. And even under the best conditions, FLIR missed some of its targets. “Ultimately, we need to find some method that’s going to do a better job at detecting dens,” Woodruff says.

York and two colleagues came to the same conclusion while working on the freezing tundra several years ago. Frustrated with how the FLIR’s inaccuracy impacted their research, the trio started brainstorming. Radar eventually emerged as a feasible option because it works well in the conditions under which FLIR struggles. “They’re on the right track in terms of finding something that could maybe be used more frequently and isn’t weather-dependent,” says Woodruff, who isn’t involved in the radar work.

The concept behind using radar to detect polar bears is simple. The radar device is attached to a plane or drone and emits electromagnetic waves as it flies over the tundra. When the waves hit the ground, some reflect back to the radar device, and some penetrate deeper. The time it takes waves to bounce back indicates how far away a surface is. And the quantity of reflected waves differs for different types of surfaces, such as rocks, dirt, snow or water. A polar bear—which is essentially a container of water—will appear as an anomaly suspended in the snow.

Credit:  TechinAsia.com

Terra Drone Corporation, a leading drone and Urban Air Mobility (UAM) technology provider, is expanding into the precision agriculture sector by acquiring the business of Avirtech, a leading startup providing agricultural drone spraying and mapping service in Southeast Asia. Terra Drone establishes a new company Terra Drone Agri in Malaysia. Terra Drone continues to expand its business under the new business brand “Terra Agri” in Malaysia and Indonesia.

As farmers around the world increasingly adopt agricultural drones, governments and regulators are beginning to recognize the many benefits of this technology. By reducing the use of pesticides and delivering growth with a significantly lower carbon footprint, drones empower farmers to become climate smart.

Leading drone research firms such as Drone Industry Insights recognize Japan’s Terra Drone as one of the top drone service providers in the world. Terra Drone has successfully completed more than 3,000 surveys and inspection projects in 10 countries to date, while its subsidiary Unifly’s the unmanned traffic management (UTM) system has become the most widely adopted in North America, Europe, and Middle East.

Avirtech specializes in providing pesticide spraying and mapping services using drones and artificial intelligence (AI). The company’s solutions aid palm oil-focused farmers and plantation companies to minimize crop failures, resulting in a 30% reduction in operating costs. Executing up to 4,000 flights daily, Avirtech has contributed to the scientific cultivation of more than 200,000 hectares of land in Indonesia and Malaysia.

Indonesia and Malaysia are known as major palm oil producers, accounting for around 80% of global production. However, these countries face serious issues including deforestation, ecological impacts, harsh labor conditions, labor shortages, and other environmental problems. Moreover, soaring prices stemming from a shortage of palm oil supply have become a major concern.

Through these businesses, Avirtech has contributed to solving labor shortages, enhancing worker safety, and boosting productivity in the palm oil industry. Also, it is expected to continue to address these issues and support sustainable palm oil production while also providing value from an ESG investment perspective.

The integration of Terra Drone’s global UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) technology leadership with Avirtech’s precision farming prowess has led to the expansion of Terra Agri. The primary focus market for this new business is Indonesia and Malaysia.

Toru Tokushige, Founder and CEO at Terra Drone Corporation, says, “Terra Drone is entering the agricultural sector anew with the transfer of business from Avirtech. The integration of our expertise with Avirtech’s groundbreaking crop intelligence technologies opens doors to unprecedented opportunities for enhancing productivity, optimizing resource allocation, and promoting environmental sustainability in farming.”

Rendy Ferixsen, CEO at Avirtech, adds, “We are pleased to announce the sale of our business to Terra Drone. This strategic progression not only empowers us to redefine the potential of agricultural drone solutions but also reinforces our unswerving dedication to technological excellence.”

Wilson Ong, COO at Avirtech says, “We believe Terra Drone will further elevate our technology to our customers and bring further advancement into Agriculture 4.0.”

About Terra Drone Corporation
Founded in 2016, Terra Drone is a leading drone and Urban Air Mobility (UAM) technology. Our indigenous and patented drone surveying and inspection solutions are being leveraged by the oil and gas, chemical, and construction industries in Japan and abroad. Our systems for unmanned traffic management (UTM) and efficient UAM have also been introduced in eight countries around the world. We’ve been ranked No. 2 in the world in the “Top commercial drone service providers ranking 2022” by Drone Industry Insights, a global drone market research organization. For more information, please visit: www.terra-drone.net

About Avirtech
Avirtech provides crop intelligence and plantation control systems for monitoring site conditions through aerial and ground information, such as topography, crop health, soil quality, rainfall and farm operations activity, and other processes necessary for production cycles. Avirtech’s solutions help to optimize crop yield and reduce costs for plantations. Through precision agriculture and data-driven insights, Avirtech accelerates the digitalization of plantations to solve workforce shortages and improve long-term sustainability.

Credit: NDTV.com

As the earth continues to warm, more nations are experiencing wildfires. last year has seen fires in Turkey, Greece, and Spain, while a wildfire in Hawaii last month claimed at least 115 lives and completely destroyed the town of Lahaina. A record-breaking wildfire season has scorched more than 15 million hectares in Canada. There, officials are carefully examining the limitations of conventional firefighting techniques.

In Europe, the fastest-warming continent due to climate change, firefighters are exploring new ways to battle monster blazes. Emergency and disaster management crews are deploying drones than can detect fires earlier and are even reviving traditional practices such as using sheep and goats to graze the grass.

Here are some of the more innovative wildfire solutions:

Drones

Drones are becoming ubiquitous on the front line.

Domingos Xavier Viegas, a professor at the Coimbra University in Portugal who specializes in wildland fire behavior, says departments across Europe are using drone technology to map vegetation, identify high-risk areas, track wildfires, collect data and deliver last-mile water deposits during wildfires. Larger drones, some of them amphibious, are also being developed to act as aerial tankers or hose bearers. These firefighting robots can spray water and fire-retardant chemicals over longer distances and larger areas. 

This can also save the lives of firefighters who otherwise have to get “so close to the fires,” says Kenneth Geipel, founder of Danish drone company Robotto Co. Geipel started Robotto in 2019 after seeing  the devastation left by record wildfires in Sweden, Greece and California a year earlier. He felt firefighters lacked the data needed to map and tackle blazes at the earliest stages.

While satellite imagery comes with delays, drones can in real time identify smoke or heat signatures, warn fire control authorities and calculate the position, size and intensity of a blaze, Geipel says.

Artificial intelligence

All of this new information requires more data-processing. Drone sensors capture more data than is humanly possible to process in real time without using AI tools, Geipel says.

In 2022, the World Economic Forum launched an AI and machine learning initiative called FireAId. The pilot project, started in Turkey in the wake of the country’s worst-ever wildfires in 2021, showed these tools can reduce response time and risk to firefighters. 

3D training 

Training regimens for firefighters are also getting more high-tech and more collaborative as departments in different countries compare best practices. 

In Catalonia, the Pau Costa Foundation has created a three-dimensional system that allows trainees and fire teams to run through emergency wildfire scenarios. This so-called “digital sandbox” helps students to visualize the behavior of a forest fire and practice fire-management strategies, preparation that can be particularly helpful for firefighters in northern European countries. 

“It’s something that major cosmopolitan cities like London had never experienced before,” says Sami Goldbrom, a group commander at the London Fire Brigade (LFB). “But it looks likely that we’re going to be experiencing them for the foreseeable future.”

England saw its worst wildfire season last year: July 19, 2022, was LFB’s busiest day since World War II. The LFB has since set up training connections with Australia, Greece and Spain.

Vegetation-clearing robots 

The best way to tackle wildfires is to prevent them in the first place. That’s why selective culling of trees and smaller plants is an important aspect of reducing wildfire risk. 

Enter vegetation-clearing robots, which can remove potential wildfire fodder. Such devices are being developed and will work alongside drones, Viegas says. The drones map out the high-risk areas from above, and the mechanical foot soldiers weed out vegetation in those patches.

Fire Flocks

Until vegetation-clearing robots become more commercially viable, some fire-management bodies are relying on an age-old pastoral technique: inviting sheep and goats to do the same job.

In Catalonia, so-called Fire Flocks – sheep or goats that graze on forest floors to clean up vegetation – are making a comeback. A project to revive this tradition was initiated in 2016, starting with a small pilot of just 48 hectares in the Baix Emporda region of Catalonia. By 2022, it had expanded to 651 hectares. 

Catalonia is one of the few places on the planet where fire-prevention measures have reversed an increase in blazes, according to Marc Castellnou, a wildland fire incident commander and analyst with the Catalan Fire Service. During the 1990s, about 13,500 hectares burned in wildfires every year – roughly 1% of the region’s forests, he says. Since then it has fallen to between 1,200 and 1,500 hectares each year, on average. 

But even the best mitigation strategies don’t negate the urgency of curbing greenhouse gas emissions to prevent fire risk from getting even worse. “If a fire has a burning power of more than 10,000 kilowatts per square meter, it can’t be extinguished no matter how many resources we put in,” Castellnou says. Some of Europe’s wildfires in recent years have hit six times that intensity.

To reach the Global Drone News editorial team on your feedback, story ideas and pitches, contact us here.

Credit: Freethink.com

Researchers from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) and Zhejiang University have created a novel method that enables drone swarms to fly in congested skies.

Ten of their robots slice through bamboo thickets in a scenario right out of a sci-fi movie, a first for an autonomous drone swarm. They do this by choosing the best flight paths and avoiding colliding with one another.

The researchers argue in their work, which was published in Science Robotics, that a drone swarm capable of independently traversing challenging, obstacle-filled terrain may serve several useful uses. While the imagination may jump — or at least mine does — to a relentless horde rushing after our hero.

They may patrol the searing front line of a wildfire, distribute supplies after an earthquake or flood, research ecosystems with little human impact, or, more dramatically, serve as the foundation for Mars’ air traffic control systems.

“Being the first swarm system capable of decentralized, autonomous flight in an unstructured environment, this work presents notable contribution to the robotics community,” Enrica Soria, a doctoral assistant at Switzerland’s École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, unaffiliated with the study, writes in a companion article.

 

The drone swarm knifes through bamboo thickets, finding optimal flight paths and avoiding running into each other.

 

Finding a way: Real-world uses of an aerial drone swarm already exist, of course.

But those drones are operating on preprogrammed flight paths — they can only go where they’ve been told to go — “blind and passive,” as Soria puts it.

Such a drone swarm can’t adjust to flying through new places cluttered with uncharted obstacles, like a city street or thick jungle.

“In these scenarios, previously unknown surroundings and narrow corridors combined with requirements of swarm coordination can create challenges,” the study authors write.

The team took inspiration from birds’ ability to flexibly coordinate their flock’s flight path. When our feathered friends are maneuvering through a forest, each one can rely on their senses of sight and balance to adjust, ahem, on the fly.