[Peetwo]

Finally old mate Pinocchio has found semi-safe ground to which he can apply his spin & bullshit...   

Drones patrol for feral animals  

• by: Chris Griffith
  
• From: The Australian
  
• July 21, 2015 12:00AM
  

Senior Technology Journalist
Sydney




Marcus Ehrlich with one of the military-grade drones being trialled in rural Australia to detect invasive pests on farms. Source: Supplied
Drones operating day and night could be in line to patrol remote areas of Australia for feral animals in what could be the 21st century answer to a rabbit-proof fence.  

That’s the aim of Ninox Robotics, a Sydney-based start-up whose unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have become the first commercial drones to conduct test flights scouring Australia’s bush at night using infra-red technology.

The drones can be flown remotely or programmed to fly themselves.

Ninox managing director Marcus Ehrlich said the company was in discussions to employ ex-military drone pilots who flew operations in Afghanistan.

“Many of them have thousands of hours of drone sorties in Afghanistan and a lot of them have come home and don’t have many places to use those skills,” he said.

Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) spokesman Peter Gibson confirmed that Ninox was the first commercial operator to be granted a licence to fly above 123m and at night during its trials.

The fixed-wing drones were put through their paces at Charleville and Moonie in southern Queensland and at Walcha in northern NSW. The UAVs were tasked with searching for wild dogs, pigs, foxes, goats, camels and rabbits, which Mr Ehrlich said cost Australian agriculture more than $1bn annually in lost production.

“Most feral animals are nocturnal and that’s the idea behind Ninox. There’s no hiding from our thermal camera,” he said.

Targeted species were identified by their heat signatures, with the UAVs beaming thermal video back to the pilots in a ground control station in real time. The 3m drones have a 1.5m fuselage, are powered by lithium batteries with a five-hour duration, and communicate by short-wave radio. Navigation during testing was done by locking on to up to seven GPS satellites at a time.

According to Mr Ehrlich, the UAVs had been cleared to fly up to a height of 490m. Capable of combing over 100sq km of land at up to 120km/h, the UAVs only flew 15km from their ground station during testing. With the drones flying above the tree canopy to avoid collisions, the tests involved both autonomous and manual control.

“The idea is that we fly over a certain area with the real time thermal imagery coming back, and if we spot a feral pig or dog we can take manual control and keep circling,” Mr Ehrlich said.

But monitoring wouldn’t turn into a Star Wars-like pursuit with the UAVs swooping down and attacking feral animals from the sky. Instead their real time locations would be given to farmers who could decide on follow-up action.

In future the drones might monitor infrastructure such as regional rail and pipelines, check dams for water levels, track fires using infra-red technology, and conduct other forms of biosecurity intelligence. They might also track people lost in national parks by their heat signatures. “The technology could tell farmers how well hydrated their crops were,” he said.

The first week of trials saw Ninox Robotics UAVs conduct a successful mock rescue of a person lost in the bush, search for small brush fires from over 5km away using thermal imaging, and catalogue a mob of sheep. The company was in talks with fire authorities, Mr Ehrlich said.

He said about 20 sorties were scheduled using visual and thermal-based cameras. Trials would continue until July 31.

Mr Ehrlich estimated that Ninox would charge farmers about $3500 for a four-hour sortie with a fully deployed team and for the information it gathered.

After that I started visualising drones skirting the perimeter of Bankstown airport or overflying Aviation House in the hunt for wascily wabbits, or wordly weasels, or donkey eared Pinocchio heads and then I ROFLMAO...

If only it was true...   

More on this from the other Aunty:

Drones trialled to help reduce billion-dollar invasive pest animal problem


ABC Rural

Updated 37 minutes ago Wed 22 Jul 2015, 3:34pm

Photo: The trials have generated a lot of interest especially because Ninox Robotics has been given special clearance by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority for the flights in Queensland and New South Wales. (Supplied: Lynelle Urquhar)


A high flying drone with infrared cameras could be the latest high-tech tool to deal with the very costly problem in Australia.
         
Audio: Marcus Ehrlich from Ninox Robotics and grain and cattle farmer Warren Urquhart talk about drone potential (ABC Rural)

Official estimates put the cost of feral pests like pigs, wild dogs, and rabbits at $1 billion each year in lost agricultural productivity.

The cost, calculated by the Invasive Animal Cooperative Research Centre, is a serious burden for landholders plus the Local, State, and Commonwealth Governments.

Now an Australian company, Ninox Robotics, is coming at the issue of pest control from another angle; the sky.

Managing Director, Marcus Ehrlich, said the company is trialling a suite of technology, using a military grade drone, across two states.

Mr Ehrlich said it is the first time anyone has been given this special clearance from the Civil Aviation Safety Authority to do these types of trials.

"We've got beyond visual line of site, which allows us to go a long way from our launch point or ground control station," he said.

We've got the ability to fly above the 400-foot altitude ceiling, about 500 metres, which allows us to cover some serious ground.
Marcus Ehrlich, Ninox Robotics

"We've got the ability to fly above the 400-foot altitude ceiling, about 500 metres, which allows us to cover some serious ground.

"We have the ability also to fly at night which is important with our thermal grade military camera."

Mr Ehrlich explained it is that infrared camera which lets them locate pest animals by stealth.

"It allows the heat signature of invasive pests to stand out enormously from the ground."

The drone itself has military grade capabilities and, as Mr Ehrlich described, is quite a big aircraft.

"It's three metres in width with its wing-span, it's 1.5 metres long and weighs about 10 kilograms."

The Ninox Managing Director adds that he cannot disclose the price of the drone as it is commercial in confidence, but suffice to say it is a lot.

"It's well into six figures," Mr Ehrlich said

He said the fact the technology they have allows the vision to be viewed live is very important.

"The drone itself passes the vision in real-time to the ground control station, where we can see it on computers and where we can give what's known as a mobile computer to farmers, which is a passive device where they can see what the drone is looking at in real time."


Photo: The grey dots on the screen are thermal images of some feral pigs gathered by the drone in a trial run near Moonie in Southern Queensland. (Supplied: Lynelle Urquhart)

Drones are currently criss-crossing a mixed cropping and cattle property near a town called Moonie in Southern Queensland and there are further trials scheduled for New South Wales.

Near Moonie, feral pigs are an enormous problem, with local farmers already pooling funds together to pay for professional aerial shooters on almost a quarterly basis.

Warren Urquhart is part of one such group and said it is something they factor into their running costs.

"We get the chopper and do it cooperatively and share the cost and it has been working out about $600 to $800 (per landholder) each time, so we do that about four times a year."

Mr Urquhart is hosting the drone trial at his place 'Warrowa', south west of Moonie, and said if the drone trials are successful it will give them another option.

"Once the drone locates them (pests) you could send in a team, a ground team perhaps and try and locate them and get them there, or if you did happen to have the helicopter about you could send the helicopter in and clean them up that way."

So the question comes back to cost effectiveness, especially for landholders and while this is in the trial phase, Mr Ehrlich said he had some early indicative prices.

"We haven't got our costs down exactly, but we think we'll be relatively competitive with some of the other pest control measures that'll be out there," he said.

"We're looking at about $3,000 to $3,500 per sortie, which is a four-hour flight and roughly works out as a bit less than a grand ($1,000) per hour."

Mr Urqhart said it is something farmers in his area will be interested in looking at, particularly if they can continue their practice of sharing the cost amongst the district.

"You need scale to bring the price down per hectare, but I think we've got the answer to that," he said.

"Our group acts cooperatively and if we just average and share the cost it keeps it well down per hectare.

"Everything helps and the technology is improving all the time and that's just the nature of technology, how quickly things advance and when those opportunities come up you have to take on that technology and make it work for you, make it help you in your business."

 "..Oh well, looks like CAsA's inspectors are all screwed then!!!."

Gobbles do you reckon you could manoeuvre one of these bad boys around the halls of Fort Fumble --  --

And guess what it may even be legal..

Video of gun-shooting drone in Clinton prompts FAA investigation


Josh Scheinblum, WTNH Reporter and WTNH.com Staff Published: July 17, 2015, 10:27 pm Updated: July 19, 2015, 5:34 pm 

CLINTON, Conn. (WTNH) — The FAA is investigating after a video of a drone shooting a hand gun in Clinton, apparently created by a local teen, was posted to YouTube. You may think military officials are the only people who can legally have a machine like this but Clinton Police tell News 8 what is seen in the video doesn’t appear to violate any state laws.

Bill Piedra is CEO of a Manchester based company called Flying Robots. He is also a drone enthusiast who, as part of his business, constructs drones that deliver flotation devices to people in danger of drowning, but with this video he has concerns it may have ramifications for his entire industry.

“It’s shocking,” said Piedra. “I really hope it doesn’t inhibit the continued development of drones for good purposes.”

The teen behind the video is Austin Haughwout of Clinton. You may remember him from another drone YouTube video that surfaced last year where he claimed to have been attacked by a woman who thought he was using his drone to record her at Hammonasset State Park. Saturday, News 8 spoke to Haughwout’s father about this latest situation and were told it’s his belief his son did nothing wrong.

Connecticut lawyer and drone advocate Peter Sachs disagrees. He thinks Haughwout may have violated federal aviation laws.

“I think they might have something legal to worry about,” said Sachs.

“The FAA will investigate the operation of an unmanned aircraft system in a Connecticut park to determine if any Federal Aviation Regulations were violated,” the FAA said in a statement. “The FAA will also work with its law enforcement partners to determine if there were any violations of criminal statutes.”

 
What strange times we live in...

MTF..P2