While Aerial Photo Media us studying the health of grapevines & filming aerial aesthetics for marketing, some of our colleagues on the East Coast are utilizing drones to collect whale snot. That is correct, it wasn’t a typo, whale snot. Apparently the “blow” snot from a whale is much like a blood sample, filled with useful biological data about the animal. Common procedure to collect this data is currently a bit invasive to the whales by using a small motor boat and riding along side of the animal. The process can agitate the animal and interfere with it’s basic natural actions.
A team of students from the Olin College of Engineering in Needham have developed a drone they call the “Snotbot” that is capable of hovering above the whale and waiting for the infamous “blow” to shoot it’s snot up in to the air. At that point the Snotbot collects the data and then returns back for analyzing.
It’s been determined that if the drone is about 10 feet above the whale, the animal will not be affected by it’s presence and the data can be accurately collected.
Go drones!
Here is a link to the full article: