Drones for Data Gathering: How open-source hardware is making environmental research more viable

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06/06/24 • 23 min

What does it take to make research catch up with climate change?
The Arctic regions hold crucial information about the environmental impact of rising temperatures. Calving glaciers and treacherous territories make it a life-threatening mission to collect it though.
As autonomous technologies improve, drones, boats and rovers are increasingly being deployed in place of humans to sample, monitor and manage marine and aquatic systems. However, as costs can range in the millions, the value these technologies can provide researchers is relevant to their cost. That is why Daniel F. Carlson and Claus Melvad put it to a group of engineering students at Aarhus University in Denmark to design a low-cost, lightweight and replicable drone for accompanying them on missions to Greenland. In this episode, we take a look at the Naval Operating Research Drone Assessing Climate Change (NORDACC) and discuss how open-source principles coupled with citizen science could accelerate climate change research - and results.
This episode is researched, produced and edited by Miriam Gradel, Journalist and Media Editor at HardwareX. The music is provided by Kammerin Hunt and ComaStudio via Pixabay.

HardwareX is a peer-reviewed scientific journal about open-source hardware. For more info, visit HardwareX.

HardwareX is a peer-reviewed scientific journal about open-source hardware. For more info, visit HardwareX.

Previous Episode

The Future of Food: (Re)growing vertical farming with open-source automation

Why did high-tech farming go bust?
Vertical Farming was one of the big new technologies of the early 2010s. By growing crops vertically with less water and no pesticides, big vertical farms promised to revolutionise food production. So why are the same vertical farms going bust across Europe and the US just ten years after they boomed?

In this episode, we journey to Cambridge University in England to meet Vijja "Pat" Wichitwechkarn. An AI researcher working on agricultural robotics, he has developed a fully automated and scalable indoor farming system - MACARONS - published on HardwareX. In this episode, we address why vertical farming keeps missing the goal, and how open-source technologies could propel it to become the food tech solution we all hoped for.
This episode is researched, produced and edited by Miriam Gradel, Journalist and Media Editor at HardwareX. The music is provided by Kammerin Hunt and ComaStudio via Pixabay.

HardwareX is a peer-reviewed scientific journal about open-source hardware. For more info, visit HardwareX.

Next Episode

High-tech Prosthetics: Granting locomotion to all with open-source robotics.

How inclusive are advanced prosthetics technologies?
The global demand for prosthetics and orthotics is only expected to rise. Yet, access to affordable and innovative solutions varies greatly at local, national and international levels. And while 3D printing has greatly contributed to making prosthetics available in low-income and developing regions, the benefits that robotics and technological innovation bring users remain highly exclusive.
This may be about to change. In an attempt to make high-tech prosthetics solutions more accessible, Professor in Biomechatronics at the University of Agder in Norway, Filippo Sanfilippo, along with his colleagues (Martin Økter, Jørgen Dale, Hua Minh Tuan, Muhammad Hamza Zafar, Morten Ottestad) have published an open-source, low-cost sensorised elastic actuator design that promises to shift innovation from the market to the commons.
This episode is researched, produced and edited by Miriam Gradel, Journalist and Media Editor at HardwareX. The music is provided by Kammerin Hunt and ComaStudio via Pixabay.

HardwareX is a peer-reviewed scientific journal about open-source hardware. For more info, visit HardwareX.