ORLT Drone Studies

Typical methods of gathering physical, on-site information for the sake of monitoring environmental conservation can be both tedious and time-consuming. By exploring the usage of drones, the ORLT Drone Studies Team aims to both streamline and enhance the process of gathering this data. In addition, the data gathered through drones can be used to enhance the process of tracking environmental conservation through advanced data analysis.

Through applications such as Pix4D, drones can be used to create pre-determined flight paths over a set area. This allows the drones to capture thorough, high-quality video footage for the designated plot of land. In turn, this provides not only very useful video footage which can be one way to track environmental changes, but the information the drone gathers during this flight plan can then be used to enhance research further.

One such example of this is that the video data which was captured would automatically be generated into an orthomosaic map, which is a detailed, accurate photo representation of an area, created out of many photos that have been stitched together and geometrically corrected (“orthorectified”) so that it is as accurate as a map.