Drones

Drones for environmental safety Unmanned oceans

In another amazing implementation of drones for environmental protection, Oceans Unmanned and The Ocean Cleanup have teamed up to tackle marine litter.

Oceans Unmanned, Inc. is a non-profit organization dedicated to the use of drones for environmental protection: The Ocean Cleanup, a non-profit organization founded in 2013 to deal with the problem of plastic and garbage deal in the sea. Now the two will work together and deploy drones to assess and enhance ongoing marine litter collection and removal efforts in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. “Later this summer, a team of Oceans Unmanned operators equipped with multiple UAS will work with researchers from The Ocean Cleanup to run a six-week campaign to take daily aerial photographs to quantify the distribution and abundance of marine litter in the target area “Reads a press release from Oceans Unmanned.

It is estimated that over five trillion pieces of plastic are currently polluting the ocean, accumulating in five ocean garbage fields, the largest being the Great Pacific Garbage Patch halfway between California and Hawaii. Founded in 2013 to address this issue, The Ocean Cleanup is developing technologies to capture and contain marine litter to bring it back to shore for recycling. In July, the organization will head back to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch to deliver the third iteration of its marine remediation design. The first system was deployed in 2018, the second, improved version in 2019. “In 2018 we successfully carried out a feasibility assessment for UAS-based remote sensing for the quantification and detection of floating plastic,” said Robin de Vries, The Ocean Cleanup geospatial specialist. “When we decided to intensify this area of ​​our work, we turned to Oceans Unmanned because of their many years of proven maritime UAS expertise.”

“We are very excited about this partnership,” said Matt Pickett, director of Oceans Unmanned. “We have been following the great work of The Ocean Cleanup for several years and look forward to supporting their efforts. We firmly believe in the power of technology to meet long-standing environmental challenges, and marine litter is one area where we believe we can have a major impact. ”The waterproof Aeromao Talon Amphibious UAS is launched from the ship, approximately two hours measure, then make a water landing and be recovered by a small boat. The images captured by the UAS are analyzed by an automated object recognition neural network that can control the on-site collection efforts and evaluate the efficiency of the recovery system.

“We will be operating over 1,000 miles offshore, and a UAS is the perfect tool to analyze this global problem,” CAPT Brian Taggart, NOAA (retired) director of Oceans Unmanned, told DRONELIFE. “We hope to be able to make a difference!”

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