Smart micro drones on display
Imagine a farmer driving along his property, a micro drone based autonomous platform for precision farming mounted to the back of his truck, precisely monitoring different areas of his farm and possibly even individual plants. This platform will be capable of planning and executing drone missions and processing data collected from the individual micro drones, fitted with low cost sensors specific for a particular organic volatile marker that can be directly correlated to various chemical and biological stages of crop degradation.
Researchers in CSIRO’s AIM FSP ( Karolina Petkovic and Michael Best) have teamed up with their partners at Swinburne University ( Prof Romesh Nagarajah and students: Michael Pieniazek, Vincent Bombonel and Jeremiah Flasza) to work towards this vision. A first prototype of micro drones autonomous platform has been presented on Swinburne Open Day (30th of July).
The group of final year students from the Robotics and Mechatronics course are working in collaboration with CSIRO scientists to develop smart drones capable of automated charging and environmental monitoring in both indoor and outdoor settings. This project is a part of the CSIRO AIM Future Science Platform, Bees and Hive research project.
Photograph of the microdrone docked on the mobile charging station prototype.
We are looking to show you more of the drones in action at the end of the year when the students complete their project.