The autonomous flight software could not control for the swinging detector and ultimately the drone crashed to the ground. Their bat detector (a BatBox Duet) weighed 300g, and attached to the end of a 5m line this weight became a pendulum. Initial testing showed this wasn’t going to work. Suspending the microphone on a 5m long line seemed the obvious solution. However, when the microphone was separated from the drone by ~5m there was little interference. The pair quickly discovered their quadcopter (a drone with four propellers) produced a lot of ultrasound noise when placing the detector on the drone, this noise was enough to drown out any other noises of interest. ‘No’, would have been a perfectly good answer. The aim of the project was fairly straightforward – they wanted to test whether drones could record bat calls. This was the genesis of their project exploring the feasibility of drones as a survey tool for bats. They began discussing the potential of combining the two and wondering what applications there might be. Tom A had recently finished his PhD exploring the social networks and diseases of bats, while Tom M had developed a keen interest in unmanned aerial vehicles (drones). Late in 2012, university friends Tom August and Tom Moore met at a friends wedding and got talking about their work since graduating.
This is certainly the case for a four year long investigation combining drones and bat detectors to create a versatile surveying tool for bats. Not all projects have a conventional beginning. Tom August and Tom Moore, have been investigating the use of semi-autonomous vehicles in relation to bat surveys…
0 kommentar(er)
