Drones

Commercial short distance drones

Long distance drones

These drones have short flight times and may prove useful to compliment boat observations of group size, spatial formation and behavior. Learning is fast and systems are generally intuitive.

DJI drones: flight time 18-25 min, easy to learn, can be deploy from small boats, vertical take off, gopros and DJI cameras. Newest model Inspire 1 has better body frame that reduces resistance and shows better fligth performance.

Bebop drones: flight time 22 minute, easy to learn, can also be deployed from small boats, vertical take off, camera 14megapixels, better payload than DJI drones.

Hexacopter APH-22: better payload than models above. Used by SWFSC Antartic UAS. Imaging system by Aerial Imaging Solutions.

Follow me drones

These drones have also short flight times but new autopilot and follow me modes may prove useful in photogrammetry and impact studies. Learning is fast and like the above drones systems are intuitive.

Hexo+: flight time 15min, uses a gopro camera, vertical take off also supported by kickstarter.

Airdog: flight time 10-20 min, waterproof, gopro camera, vertical take off, another kickstarter supported project.

Iris quadcopter: flight time 16-22min, payload 400g, tablet based software, and advance 3PV follow me mode.

These drones have longer flight times and are suitable for distribution and abundance survyes. They have used to detect poachers, for mapping, and study landscape. Depending on the company the models can be customize to suit better your research. These drones require more training than short distance drones.

Conservation drones: payload, flight time and range depends on the needs of researchers, hand launch, ground base.

Maja UAV: flight time ~1h, payload 1.5kg, used for aerial photography, surveying, and environmental protection, hand launch, ground base.

Mapping drones Aero-M and X8-M: flight time 14-40 min, higher resolution cameras (Pix4D's image processing sofware), vertical take off.

RQ-20A PUMA AE: flight time 3.5+ hours, capable of landing in land and water, EO and IR camera, communication range 15 km.

MD4-1000 and 3000: flight time 45-88 min, payload 1.2kg, fly by remote control or automatically, vertical take off, used for photogrammetry, agriculture, and security.