In September 2013 we were contacted by Cape Nature to design and implement several UAV and Robotic systems. These were designed to help in nature conservation.
Project Pig Spotting
The Eurasian wild Boar (feral pig) was introduced to the Porterville area to combat a moth problem. The moth would burrow into pine trees and kill them resulting in large losses for local businesses. The feral pigs were introduced as a predator and soon had the moth problem under control. Unfortunately, these feral pigs bred with domestic farm pigs and in a space of 10 years grew to a population of 10000 in an area of 100 square km causing heavy agricultural loss, loss in some species of animals and even causing traffic accidents.
In an attempt to solve the problem, Cape Nature carried out night time shoots (when the pigs were awake and grazing) through farmlands, but unfortunately this had very little impact. We designed, built and flew a small, lightweight UAV quad-copter using APM 2.5 with GPS and a live feed camera system to enable Cape Nature to have an eye in the sky.
This system was compact and light enough to enable the rangers to take it into surrounding areas during the daytime when large colonies of pigs would be sleeping in mud hollows. They could spot them from above allowing for a faster way of culling. The bush around this area can be up to 2m tall making it impossible from the ground to see where the pigs were sleeping.
The Squirrel UAV (as it was named) had a lightweight but stiff, fully vacuum-formed body of several parts, encompassing the electronics. It used Mission Planner and GPS to fly out of the line of sight and provide a coordinate when the pigs where located. It had a flight time of 15 minutes and a range of about 1km.