A Measure of Success - Successful Implementation of Drones

This week’s blog will focus on the successful implementation of drones, that have shown greater benefits over traditional methods in the agricultural field. As this technology advances and spreads to companies all over the world, there are many concerns such as, safety, ethical/unethical uses, and privacy that must be addressed and continuously monitored. Because this is a review on a successful agricultural project, it may have fewer concerns given how most farms and agriculture areas are grown outdoors and, in most cases, largely unpopulated areas.


The geometric features of agricultural trees such as canopy area, tree height, and crown volume provide useful information about plantation status and crop production. Most of these calculations are completed using time-consuming field measurements and can produce inconsistent results. As an alternative, using UAV’s can present a 3-dimensional geometric feature to single growth or tree-rows, which reported up to 97% accuracy on tree quantification and minimal deviations as compared to its traditional time-consuming method. 

When these UAV’s are recording data in a private farm or field, they are granted permission by the owner. There are no privacy rights trespassed in this way, which is a positive approach to begin with. Since most areas are field away from the public, the drone itself would not pose an immediate safety risk to anyone around, unless it was flying close to homes surrounding agricultural areas. From my experiences in Europe, this is more prevalent so the safety of the drone not falling from the sky by loss of system control is paramount. 

Results of the data imaging were most accurate with the UAV flying around 50m, as opposed to 100m. This is a safety concern for livestock and birds as well, that has to be taken into consideration. Each country has its own drone zoning, or “drone buffer”, to help regulate privacy and security from using drones. If zoning or imaging were to be used not only for agricultural benefits but for mapping, planning, and monitoring of urban city areas, the impact of all the concerns on society will need a lot of attention. The agility and quality imaging abilities make remote sensing drone’s advantageous mapping tool for planning development, and in this case, monitoring the healthy growth of crops and trees. There are still more challenges and concerns to be more surmounted.

One advantage to creators around the globe is that they have the ability to test their products, using simulated environments to help achieve not only a solid reputation but demonstrate superiority in their performance evaluations. The University of Michigan College of Engineering researchers has a “playground” to test their drones. This gives them exposure to weather elements and practices behind the controller.

Along with simulated flight tests, another big safety concern is airworthiness of these drones, more specific to the control and communications technology. The most common data linkage to a drone is done by Line-of-sight, operating in the “C” Band at low frequencies, which are less affected by extreme weather conditions. Most of the drone technology today is operated by a pilot, and have some type of autopilot features available. If a link-loss were to happen, most drones fly to a predesignated position or just continue to hover until the data-link is restored. This is an important safety feature in my opinion. The drone takes overusing its autopilot sustainment, and even some guided direction, so It does not just shut down and drop out of the sky. Features like this will continue to be the standard as we continue seeing new regulations set in motion.





Torres-Sanchez, J. (2015). High-Throughput 3-D Monitoring of Agricultural-Tree Plantations with Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Technology. https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.libproxy.db.erau.edu/docview/1691039598?pq-origsite=summon

Arbor, A. (2018). Drones fly in new University of Michigan outdoor test lab. https://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/2018/03/new_university_of_michigan_m-a.html

The Future of Drones in the Emergency Medical Space

With all the capabilities drones have, there is one that remains a huge asset and will surely be developed in the future. According to Ria Roy (2017), "The plan is to use unmanned aerial vehicles, also known as drones, “to ship manufactured lungs and other organs from production facilities to hospitals for transportation” (pg. 1). I completely agree with using technology in this field, in order to help people in emergency need. The application of using drones to transport packages through cities is already coming to life. We have companies all over the world innovating and increasing the payload amount of their existing drones. It is only a matter of time before we are able to transport hundreds of pounds via UAV, but is that necessary? Maybe not. Most companies operate drones with less than 50lbs of payload, and seem to be getting a lot of jobs done faster, than any manned system would be able to keep up with.

1.1 - pictured is a drone delivering blood plasma

Still, there are challenges associated with using an unmanned system in this capacity. In terms of security, it may be difficult if the drone becomes a target for someone trying to interrupt this process and use whatever "luggage" the drone has, for their own interests. I believe that so many organizations are innovating at such a rate, that the security aspect is not given any attention. This company mentioned that they will also be transporting pig organs to humans. I have not read into the science of doing a pig organ transplant into a human, but I do know that a lot of research has gone into using animal organs for humans. This drone and the medical person flying with it, may need to be highly skilled in knowing how to properly transplant an animal organ into a human, while tricking the human's immune system to not recognizing its coming from another species. While this capability could be a great asset, it is also a huge challenge for scientists and the MOTH.

One Chinese unmanned aerial vehicle company called, EHang, is testing out their new drones to deliver organs within the next 15 years. They are working with Lung Biotechnology, a public benefit corporation focused on the development and commercialization of innovative products to enhance organ transplantation. "The collaborators are calling this program the ManufacturedOrganTransportHelicopter(MOTH)system. With an order in hand for up to 1,000 unmanned aerial vehicles..." (Roy, 2017). Some key takeaways from this unmanned system are that it is a sophisticated collaboration with foreseeable impacts on humanity and the society at large. One big takeaway is how such collaborations would infuse the field and practitioners? In my opinion, doctors can be anywhere in the world, and be able to call upon a drone that sends its organ donor much faster than any traditional manned system would take. At the push of a button or two, it can advance multi-tasking in a life saving event, using less brain power and manned operations. What I did find interesting about the MOTH system though, is that it is an autonomous drone that is human-sized. I am wondering if the reasons for this company making such a quadcopter, is for the transportation of medical personnel or patients in the future? See pic 1.2 below.

1.2 - MOTH drone

The company further states that each year 200,000 people in the United States die of endstage lung disease, many of which could have been saved had they been delivered a lung by a MOTH system. Other benefits that this unmanned system could provide, are in terms of saving millions of gallons of aviation transport gasoline annually. The MOTH system, much like all other drones, are operated by an all-electric system, traveling through the air at speeds up to 65 miles per hour. With it having a smartphone app, guided by a global positioning system, and automatically pre-programmed to land at a variety of destinations, it's perfectly suited for a variety of medical emergency transport.

-Robotic Realm


Roy, R (2017). The Future of Performance Improvement: Drones In The Emergency Medical Space. Retrieved from Hunt library. https://erau.instructure.com/courses/97830/discussion_topics/1531531?module_item_id=5428576

The Future of Unmanned Maritime System Imaging

We have seen the technology used to capture living creatures among the seafloor, in both shallow and deep waters. What is most efficient and cost-effective for this exploration is something called a Baited remote underwater video station, or BRUVS. This stationary tool is placed along the seafloor and uses bait to lure in species of fish, in order to accurately record and observe what is living in each habitat. Pictures below is an example of a BRUVS, first pioneered by AIMS and collaborators.

At the heart of a BRUVS is a small, inexpensive action camera in a simple but robust underwater housing. This camera is held in a steel frame that also holds a bait arm. At the end of this bait arm is with a mesh bag full of minced pilchards to attract sea life. Lights can be added for night and deep water surveys. Although for many years, this tool has been valuable to capture sealife, in a stationary platform, but how are we surveying the seafloor now and the tools we are engineering for the future, is what I want to focus on now. 

Underwater hyperspectral imaging is a relatively new method for characterizing seafloor composition. To date, it has been deployed from moving underwater vehicles, such as remotely operated vehicles and autonomous underwater vehicles. While moving vehicles allow relatively rapid surveying of several 10-1000 m2, they are subjected to short-term variations in vehicle attitude that often compromise image acquisition and quality. During a recent study by IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing in May 2019, based on supervised classification, 24 spectrally different seafloor materials were detected, including hydrothermal and non-hydrothermal materials, and benthic fauna. 

Now you might be googling or asking yourself what those materials are, but I did that work for you so let me help you define those. In broad terms, hydrothermal material includes various crystallized substances from high-temperature aqueous solutions at high vapor pressures. This is leading to some important technological and environmental advantages such as: one-step process for direct production of crystalline ceramic powders, low energy consumption, products with much higher homogeneity than classical solid state processing, versatility in producing oxides, non-oxides and hybrid materials with different morphologies, possibility to be up-scaled to pilot and production levels.

Hydrothermal synthesis crystal 

For subaerial purposes, hyperspectral data are typically acquired by hyperspectral imagers on airplanes or satellites. These hyperspectral imagers are passive imagers as they use the sun as a light source for surface illumination. They record the intensity of reflected solar radiation over a wavelength range of 400–2500 nm, and are used in both onshore and offshore settings. Since the technology in unmanned systems has evolved into using ROVs that are operated within a few meters to the seafloor, giving the data collection a huge advantage over aerial or satellite collection. I definitely agree to use an ROV for this method, as well as increasing the capability to recover those materials. The further we are able to explore into deep sea as well as deep space, scientists may have a chance of discovering material that can be used in the absence of something we might be having a shortage of. Pictured below is an example of a couple hyperspectral imagers currently being used in the civilian sector. 

If you would like to view the article used for referencing the photographs, I have attached the link below, found through ERAU library. 

https://ieeexplore-ieee-org.ezproxy.libproxy.db.erau.edu/document/8587132

Unmanned Systems Defined

I define unmanned systems as a completely autonomous machine, whether operating on land, sea, or air, that completely eliminates the need for a manned operator. Unmanned systems are not limited to the autonomous function, and can also be remotely controlled or GPS guided by the remote user.