Unmanned Live #1 Conservation RPAS 2014

Gary Mortimer

To kick off a new way of doing conferences we had our first show under the Unmanned Live brand last Friday evening and Saturday morning for some flying. These shows will be less formal than sUSB Expo and be less talking more doing.

Unmanned Live shows will bring together talking and doing within specialized areas of unmanned activity.

It was easier to make the first one about what I do!

Unmanned aircraft and conservation are a great fit. Sadly wildlife management is just not as sexy as oil exploration or asset valuation. Conservationists struggle to raise funds for their work and funding full sized aircraft surveys is very often out of the question.

That’s led to conservationists adapting COTs systems for their needs.

I spoke about the radio collar work and experiments that Victor Hugo and myself have been undertaking which mean we are no able to:-

Repeat UHF data collars

Map VHF legacy collars

Map Wifi and Cellphone locations.

Tim Snow then spoke about poisoning and prevention and the use of unmanned aircraft to map and record the scene of poisoning incidents.

Ben Hoffman rescues raptors and uses his multirotors to check nests for chicks he also uses radio collar tracking.

Luke Wijnberg gave an amazing account of his travels in Uganda mapping a large area to great accuracy at a rapid rate. Its not difficult to say that he stole the show and wowed the room.

The event was a great success that we hope to repeat in May 2015.

Watch out for other sUAS News events popping up in other parts of the world with all manner of platforms and places.