How Local Drone Pilots Are Reducing Dengue Fever

Posted on December 13, 2018 | Leave a comment

The dengue fever outbreak in Fiji in 2014 was one of the region’s largest known outbreaks of the mosquito-borne infection. Scientists studying the outbreak believe climate change was a contributing factor: more flooding results in more areas of standing water for longer periods—perfect breeding grounds for mosquitos. According to the World Health Organization’s Regional Office, the islands of the South Pacific are “some of the most vulnerable places on the planet to health effects of climate change.” Unfortunately, existing tools to control these mosquitoes such as insecticide spraying are not efficient and have failed to eliminate dengue as a public health concern. Worldwide, an estimated 390 million human dengue infections occur every year. This explains why ministries of health in the South Pacific expect larger outbreaks. In fact, Fiji experienced another outbreak of dengue fever this year, which once again prompted urgent calls for more effective and preventative solutions.

One such solution may be the use of Wolbachia-treated mosquitos. Wolbachia is a naturally occurring bacteria that prevents mosquitos from transmitting diseases like Zika and dengue. This explains why our partners at the World Mosquito Program (WMP) and the Ministry of Health and Medical Services have been releasing Wolbachia-carrying mosquitos in Fiji. This is done be driving around a town or village with canisters of Wolbachia mosquitoes (W-mosquitoes for short). The driver pulls over by the side of the road every few minutes to release one canister at a time. Over time, Wolbachia becomes established in the local mosquito population. When most of the mosquito population have Wolbachia, local communities in Fiji should be at lower risk of getting dengue, Zika and chikungunya.

Releasing Wolbachia mosquitos “by car” presents a number of challenges, however. First, during the rainy and cyclone seasons, many roads become unusable while pools of standing water breed more mosquitos. What’s more, mosquitos that are released by car may not be uniformly distributed over an area but rather constrained by the local road network. As such, a significant amount of work and time has to go into planning the best routes for cars given these fixed constraints. Lastly, not everyone lives next to a road and so are potentially excluded from public health interventions.

Countries in the region experience severe flooding during Cyclone season

This explains why WMP teamed up with WeRobotics earlier this year. WeRobotics engineers have been busy developing an aerial release mechanism that can be attached to a drone. Combining both the aerial and ground-based release of W-mosquitos is expected to be a lot more effective. The aerial release mechanism can store up to 160,000 W-mosquitos at 5 degrees Celsius and release 200 mosquitos at a time every 50 meters. This is enough to cover an area of four square kilometers. Aerial releases are much faster than ground releases (no traffic, stop lights, pedestrians, etc.) and, unlike cars, drones don’t burn fossil fuels. A drone can cover an area of 10km2 in a couple hours while mosquito releases by car over the same area would require several days. In addition, the use of drones provides far more homogeneous releases and better coverage. Another bonus: drone routes are much easier to plan than car routes.

The mechanism is airborne and ready to release 200 W-mosquitos at a time

A fully operational prototype of the release mechanism is currently being piloted in the South Pacific after 5 months of local community engagement and awareness raising. WeRobotics engineers have already trained local drone pilots with South Pacific Flying Labs and Drone Services Fiji on how to operate the drone and the release mechanism safely and effectively. As such, the local team at Pacific Flying Labs is now taking the lead in piloting the drone and aerial releases as part WMP’s public health intervention in Fiji.

Building local capacity is central to the mission of WeRobotics as is creating local ownership of health, humanitarian, development and environmental projects. The localization of this expertise and technology through the global Flying Labs network leads to more sustainable and impactful projects.

An aerially-released mosquito finds their way to the arm of a WMP colleague

When the pilot project completes this week, South Pacific Flying Labs and partners will have released around half-a-million W-mosquitos. WMP has engaged the help of local community members to host a large network of mosquito traps across the release area to determine how widely, quickly and uniformly these mosquitos have dispersed compared to ground-released mosquitos. W-mosquitos can be distinguished from others because the former have each been dusted with yellow-colored dye. Once our friends at WMP complete their evaluation following of trial, we’ll be able to quantify the added value of complementing ground-based releases with aerial releases. Future trials will seek to optimize the release methods so that mosquito deployments can be achieved across larger areas.

South Pacific Flying Labs is funded by Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT). The drone component of the mosquito project is funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) through the Combating Zika and Future Threats Grand Challenge. Earlier this year, WeRobotics tested the use of drones for mosquito release in Brazil using a completely different prototype release mechanism.

 

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How Drone Natives are Decolonizing Robotics

Posted on July 23, 2018 | Leave a comment

In 2015, Cyclone Pam devastated the islands of Vanuatu in the South Pacific. In response to the Category 5 Cyclone, I was asked by the World Bank to coordinate a humanitarian drone mission to speed up the damage assessments. But I couldn’t find any local drone pilots at the time, so had to recruit two foreign drone companies from Australia and New Zealand instead. Their drone pilots did a great job under challenging conditions over the course of several weeks. I continue to be in touch with them and continue to learn from them. They’re top notch professionals.

I’m just really tired of seeing videos like the one above. Foreigners with the technology; locals as passive observers. It should of course be the other way around: Locals with the technology and foreigners as passive observers; foreigners holding umbrellas for local drone pilots. Seriously. Why can’t it be the other way around?

Fast forward to 2018. The South Pacific has been battered by an onslaught of major cyclones, no fewer than 4 in almost as many months. Unlike 2015, one local drone pilot deployed to the affected areas to support the relief efforts. Her name is Amrita Lal (pictured below) and she serves as the Coordinator of South Pacific Flying Labs based in Fiji. In deploying with the Red Cross following Cyclone Keni, Amrita became the first local drone pilot to deploy with a National Red Cross Society in the region.

Our mission at WeRobotics is to localize opportunity. We create local opportunities to participate in problem solving, to take the lead in problem solving, to be a real part of the solution, to have meaningful and sustainable impact. By localizing expertise in robotics, we create new opportunities to scale humanitarian aid, sustainable development, public health or nature conservation efforts locally. In so doing, we create local opportunities for professional development and upward mobility. How do we create and sustain these new opportunities? By localizing emerging technologies through our Flying Labs. (We like to call them Wakanda Flying Labs).

Demand for the skills that Amrita and her Flying Labs have is growing. This is the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” (4IR) after all: the rise of Robotics and Artificial Intelligence is reshaping the global labor market, shutting down some job opportunities entirely while creating new ones. This is a disruptive time in human history. And we know from previous industrial revolutions that they create divides between the “have’s” and “have nots”; between the included and the excluded; between those who have access to new opportunities and those who don’t. The First Industrial revolution was powered by the steam engine along with the iron and textile industries. The second was powered by steel, oil and electricity. Digital technologies unleashed the Third Industrial Revolution. Each these revolutions created new opportunities for some (usually in high-income countries), and obliterated existing opportunities for others (usually in low-income countries).

The Digital Divide of the Third Industrial Revolution has created profound inequalities, and the Robotics Divide of the 4IR is already exacerbating these inequalities. (What’s that? You don’t have 3G in your village? Oh. Well sorry, we can’t fly our medical delivery drones to your village without 3G. Can we have our umbrella back?). As my new colleague from Cameroon, Marco Enoh, recently tweeted,

“We forcefully enabled the First Industrial Revolution, were sidelined during the Second Industrial Revolution, we developed dependency in the Third Industrial Revolution… Now the Fourth Industrial Revolution! What are we going to do? Either shape technologies for collective prosperity or forever remain at the lowest levels of global value chains.”

The Fourth Industrial Revolution is creating new jobs in lower-income countries. But these jobs are almost always taken by foreign companies from higher-income countries. Why? Either because the local talent doesn’t exist, or because said local talent is not visible or connected to these new job opportunities. Our Flying Labs serve to overcome these unjust hurdles. Fact is, foreign companies are more expensive to hire. Foreign drone pilots need more time to deploy. They need international flights and hotels. They often don’t know the countries that they’re sent to and rarely know the local languages or customs. This creates an exciting business opportunity for Amrita and Marco, and their colleagues at other Flying Labs in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Robotics enables new business opportunities because robots enable an entirely new form of mobility—autonomous mobility. Autonomous mobility in the air (flying drones), in the oceans (swimming drones) and on land (driving drones). Mobility gives freedom, which creates new opportunities (think of the automotive revolution). This explains why we are committed to helping our Flying Labs and their partners use autonomous robotics to overcome the challenge of mobility in humanitarian aid, sustainable development, nature conservation and public health. We’ve borrowed some of this language from our new friends at World Bicycle Relief because their approach is similar to ours: It isn’t about the technology—bicycle or drone—it’s about localizing this technology sustainably and respectfully to create new opportunities.

So yes, we localize robotics. But that’s hardly the point. Robotics is simply a means to an end. We localize opportunities to scale local solutions. We localize opportunities to enable direct and local participation in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. This explains why our Flying Labs are directly connected to each other; why Amrita from Pacific Flying Labs recently trained Leka and Team from Tanzania Flying Labs on how to use underwater drones; why Dania, Oscar and Humberto from Panama Flying Labs are working with us to create engineering solutions with Pacific Flying Labs; why Tanzania Flying Labs is helping to incubate Kenya Flying Labs and why Nepal Flying Labs is learning about cargo drones from Flying Labs in Peru and the Dominican Republic. Each of these connections in the Flying Labs network create new opportunities to participate in the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Amrita was presented with an important opportunity to become the first local, female drone pilot in her region to deploy with a National Red Cross Society. She grabbed it and ran with it. This experience has opened up new opportunities for her and her Flying Labs team in the Pacific. This includes incubating a new hub of Pacific Flying Labs in Vanuatu in coming months. So the next time Vanuatu has to deal with a major tropical cyclone or other consequences of climate change, the World Bank must not hire me or hire any foreign drone pilots to accelerate their damage assessments. No, they should instead hire Amrita and her team of drone natives from Pacific Flying Labs.

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New! Online Training for Humanitarian Drone Missions

Posted on April 18, 2018 | 2 comments

We’re very pleased to announce the launch of the WeRobotics Online Training Institute. Training is absolutely central to the work and mission of WeRobotics. To date, we have provided our professional trainings exclusively in person. We’ve given these trainings to a numerous professionals across many organizations including the World Food Program (WFP), UN Development Program (UNDP), UNICEF, Catholic Relief Services (CRS), local universities and many national & local stakeholders including National Disaster Management Organizations (NDMOs) in Peru, Myanmar, Malawi, Mozambique, Nepal, Dominican Republic, Maldives, Fiji, Seychelles and beyond.

We’re thrilled to be teaming up with our friends at TechChange to provide this training. Their highly dynamic online training platform is second-to-none. Just last year alone, TechChange trained over 7,000 people from 155 countries on their platform. We’ve been huge fans of TechChange and are grateful to finally have the opportunity to work both with their outstanding team and unique approach to online learning.

Drones in Humanitarian Action

While in-person trainings will absolutely remain central to our work and mission, we’ve realized that a substantial component of these trainings can just as well be provided online and scaled more easily this way. The reason for this is simple: technology is at most 10% of the solution in humanitarian emergencies and many other contexts including public health and environmental protection, for example. Technology is certainly an absolutely crucial 10% of the solution—serving as a multiplier effect—but without a strong understanding of the tasks necessary to use this technology safely, responsibly and effectively (the other 90%), you run the danger of multiplying nonsense and becoming part of the problem rather than the solution. As such we’ve decided to invest a considerable amount of time and energy to convert our offline trainings into online courses in order to train more people on how to use drones more responsibly across a range of sectors.

Our very first online course will focus on Drones in Humanitarian Action: From Coordination to Deployments. The course will be identical to the trainings that we’ve provided to new and seasoned humanitarian professionals around the world. Drones in Humanitarian Action will give participants the training they need to be an important part of the solution during future disaster risk management efforts. The training is instrumental for anyone already engaged or expecting to support disaster response efforts. The course will be of equal interest to participants who want to better understand what it takes to lead humanitarian drone missions safely, responsibly and effectively. As such, the training is ideal for existing drone pilots including pilots working in the commercial drone space. That said, no background in disaster response or drones is required for this foundational course.

Overview of Humanitarian Drone Training

Our online training represents the first ever online professional course specifically dedicated to humanitarian applications of drones. The 7-week training comprises 7 key modules, which cover the following important topics:

  • Drone Technologies and Mission Planning
  • Mapping Drones and Information Products
  • Cargo Drones and New Solutions
  • Humanitarian Principles and Codes of Conduct
  • Survey of Drone Deployments in Humanitarian Aid
  • Humanitarian Drone Missions: Lessons Learned & Best Practices
  • Drones in Humanitarian Action: Localization and Coordination
  • Aerial Data Interpretation and Analysis
  • Future Trends in Drone Technologies and Applications

The online training will also include a dedicated module on Technical Basics of Drone Pilot Certification, which will cover the following topics:

  • Rules of the Air
  • Safety
  • Airspace
  • Flight Permissions
  • Basic Chart Reading
  • Meteorology
  • Aircraft Knowledge
  • Airmanship

The WeRobotics training on Drones in Humanitarian Action are built on the first ever trainings on humanitarian drones provided by the Humanitarian UAV Network (UAViators) between 2015-2016. These professional trainings were given by WeRobotics co-founders Dr. Patrick Meier and Dr. Andrew Schroeder, and included trainees from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN/OCHA), WFP, International Organization for Migration (IOM), Direct Relief,, NetHope, Medair, Global Medic, USAID, FEMA, AAAS, MIT, European Commission, ACF International, Greenpeace and many more.

Trainers and Expertise

The online training on Drones in Humanitarian Action was prepared by the AidRobotics Team at WeRobotics. The team, Joel Kaiser, Dr. Patrick Meier and Dr. Andrew Schroeder, brings together over 40 years of experience in humanitarian aid and emergencies. Patrick will serve as primary lead for the Online Training.

Joel Kaiser: Over 15 years of field experience in humanitarian assistance and disaster response in over a dozen countries and including 4 years pioneering the humanitarian use of drones. Joel has extensive experience in humanitarian coordination, and advanced studies in emergency management. Prior to WeRobotics, Joel worked as an emergency response specialist with several different humanitarian agencies including the Canadian Red Cross, Food for the Hungry and Medair. Has led disaster response teams in many humanitarian crises including Haiti, Myanmar, Nepal, Philippines, Somalia, Iraq and Syria. Since 2013 these responses have involved the use of drones to improve operational decision-making. Holds an MA in International Development with a focus on Complex Emergencies from Simon Fraser University. Was one of the lead experts running the recent humanitarian drones workshop in Malawi with UNICEF and earlier with WFP in Myanmar. Joel is on the core team of the Humanitarian UAV Network (UAViators) and has played a key role in developing the International Humanitarian UAV Code of Conduct.

Dr. Patrick Meier: Over 15 years of experience in humanitarian technology. Spearheaded the coordination of drones in the aftermath of Category 5 Cyclone Pam in Vanuatu and the 8.0 Earthquake in Nepal. Co-directed the WeRobotics workshops on humanitarian drones for UNICEF in Malawi and for WFP in Peru, Myanmar and the DR. Coordinated and evaluated cargo drone field tests in Peru and the DR. Spearheaded the Open AI Challenge with the World Bank to use AI for the automated analysis of aerial imagery and previously directed applied research on related projects including a year-long study for the Red Cross on the use of drones for disaster risk management. Served as long-time consultant to the World Bank’s UAVs for Resilience Program. Founded the Humanitarian UAV Network (UAViators) and previously developed & provided hands-on professional trainings on humanitarian drone missions to a wide range of humanitarian professionals. Also co-authored the most comprehensive report on Drones in Humanitarian Action and played a key role developing the first humanitarian drone trainings and the International Humanitarian UAV Code of Conduct. Received advanced degrees in International Affairs from The Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy and Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. Authored the book, Digital Humanitarians, which has been praised by experts from the UN, Red Cross, World Bank, USAID, DfID, Harvard, MIT, Oxford and more.

Dr. Andrew Schroeder: Over 10 years of experience in humanitarian and public health emergencies, logistics and disaster response, with extensive expertise in data-analytics, geospatial data and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Internationally recognized leader in GIS, data science and applied epidemiology for humanitarian aid and global health. Directly engaged in relief efforts following numerous disasters including Cyclone Nargis (Myanmar), Haiti Earthquake, Japan Earthquake/Tsunami, Typhoon Haiyan (Philippines), Ebola Outbreak (Sierra Leone and Liberia), Nepal Earthquake, Hurricanes Matthew, Maria, Irma and Havey (Caribbean) and Wildfires (California). Founded the Nethope’s UAV Working Group. Co-directed the WeRobotics workshops on humanitarian drone for WFP and co-directed UNDP drones for disaster resilience project in the Maldives. On the core team of the Humanitarian UAV Network (UAViators) and previously provided hands-on professional trainings on humanitarian drone missions to a wide range of humanitarian professionals. Played a key role in developing of the International Humanitarian UAV Code of Conduct. Received advanced degrees in social analysis and public policy from New York University and the University of Michigan.

How To Register and More

The online training on Drones in Humanitarian Action will be given in June and July 2018. Please add your email address here if you are interested in joining this upcoming course:

https://werobotics.org/online-training

When the registration for the course opens on May 1st, you’ll be the first to receive an invitation to register. Certificates of completion will be provided to participants who successfully pass the training. We plan to offer this training several times a year and already plan to introduce other trainings in the future including trainings on the use of Cargo Drones in Public Health and Drones in Environmental Action. In the meantime, big thanks to our friends at TechChange for their partnership.

 

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Meet the Youngest Drone Pilots in Fiji

Posted on April 11, 2018 | Leave a comment

In 2017, WeRobotics was one of more than 500 teams to compete in the MIT Solve Challenge on Youth, Skills and Workforce of the Future. Only 2% were selected as winners, and only 1% of all the applicants received dedicated funding from the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) and the Atlassian Foundation. Our pitch focused on building the foundations of South Pacific Flying Labs. By winning the MIT Solve Award and securing funding from DFAT, Atlassian and the University of the South Pacific (USP), Pacific Flying Labs has been able to join our global and growing network of Flying Labs; including labs in Nepal, Tanzania, Uganda, Peru, Dominican Republic and soon Brazil, Panama, Senegal and Philippines. Pacific Flying Labs is the first of our labs to have a strong focus on preparing youths for the workforce of the future.

Pacific Labs is a joint collaboration with USP and the university’s Geospatial Sciences Program, which is where the lab is based. Amrita Lal, an alum of USP’s program, leads the work of Pacific Flying Labs from Fiji. In the weeks and months following our successful pitch to the MIT Solve Challenge, Amrita along with WeRobotics, USP faculty and volunteers organized two dedicated trainings and projects with youths from Fiji. Amrita and team also organized and ran the first ever drones for good conference in the South Pacific, bringing together key stakeholders from Fiji and the region to catalyze new partnerships for future projects. The youths who participated in the trainings and projects included young women and men from local schools and local orphanages. In addition, undergraduate students from USP also participated in trainings on campus. As part of this initiative, WeRobotics transferred 2 underwater drones and 2 aerial drones to South Pacific Flying Labs along with tablets and relevant software.

The first training and project focused on the use of marine robotics to study the health of coral reefs. Participants learned how to use underwater drones safely and effectively. They captured over an hour of underwater footage from a pier off Maui Bay. The following day, at the USP GIS Lab, they teamed up into groups and analyzed the footage. The groups learned to identify the different species of fish (particularly butterfly fish) and corals visible in the footage in order to assess the health of the corals. They also learned about how marine life is impacted by human activity including climate change. They subsequently created powerpoint slides and presented their findings and recommendations to each other. After their presentations, participants were trained on how to use aerial drones safely and effectively. This training was carried out at an approved field on USP campus. The women who participated in these trainings and projects ranged from 12 to 18 years in age and all but one were from a local orphanage.

The second training and project focused on the use of aerial drones for a disaster risk reduction at an informal settlement near USP campus. The training began with a lecture on the use of drones in disaster response. This training comprised both manual flights and automated flights. The latter taught participants how to program and supervise flight plans. Following this training, the youths worked with Pacific Flying Labs to map an informal settlement. Once the imagery was collected, participants returned to the lab to process and analyze the imagery. More specifically, they teamed up into groups to identify health risks, safety concerns and vulnerabilities to natural hazards. They subsequently created powerpoint slides and presented their findings and recommendations to each other. Their findings were subsequently shard with the Red Cross. Young men (aged 17-18) and one young woman (aged 17) participated in this second training and project. Some of the youths who participated in the marine training & project also joined the aerial robotics training & project.

Once the trainings and projects were completed, Pacific Flying Labs and WeRobotics met with key stakeholders and prospective partners to explore collaboration opportunities. This included meetings with the Australian Red Cross (pictured below), Fiji Red Cross, Secretariat of Pacific Communities (SPC), World Mosquito Program (WMP) and Suva Fire Service, for example.

In addition, live demos of cargo flights were given to both to the Civil Aviation Authority and to USP students and faculty (video below). Also, initial training on marine drones was provided to USP students at the swimming pool on campus. In total, 21 USP students joined our aerial and marine drone demos and lectures.

The first phase of our work with Pacific Flying Labs culminated with a full day workshop on the use of drones for social good in the South Pacific. This was the first convening of it’s kind in the region, and brought together key stakeholders to address common challenges, identify opportunities and to create new strategic partnerships. These stakeholders included the Fiji Red Cross, Australian Red Cross, Australian Center for Field Robotics, Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC) and several other groups. Two youths who participated in both sets of trainings/projects opened the workshop by presenting their findings (photo below; the young woman in this photo is not one of the vulnerable youths who participated in the trainings/projects). This opening session was followed by a series of talks from local and international participants working on drones projects in the region.

During the afternoon sessions, participants discussed common challenges and new partnership opportunities. Over 30 participants from 8 different organizations participated in the workshop. Four new strategic partnership opportunities were identified  between Pacific Labs and the following organizations as a result: Red Cross, SPC, World Mosquito Program and Australian Center for Field Robotics.

Today, Fiji is being hit by a second cyclone in just as many weeks. Amrita and team are already in touch with the Fiji Red Cross and are on standby to support the disaster response and recovery work after Cyclone Keni barrels through. So instead of hiring drone companies from Australia or further afield, organizations like the Red Cross, UN and World Bank can hire young drone pilots from Fiji to support a wide range of humanitarian, development and environmental projects. Local pilots can respond more quickly than foreign pilots; plus they know the country better, speak the local language, understand local traditions and have lower overhead costs. This is just one several ways we plan to prepare youths in the region for the workforce of the future.

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Testing Underwater Drones: Lessons Learned from the South Pacific

Posted on March 28, 2018 | 2 comments

I was in Fiji earlier this month to work on a number of WeRobotics projects with our Pacific Flying Labs. One of these entailed the use of underwater drones to study the health of coral reefs near Maui Bay. We had the opportunity to test two new underwater drones for this project: the Trident by our technology partner, OpenROV and the PowerRay by the company PowerVision. Both drones only became available a just few months ago. In fact, we were the first not-for-profit organization to gain access to the Trident thanks to OpenROV’s invaluable support. These two underwater drones are now part of the Pacific Flying Labs fleet along with 2 aerial drones that we transferred to the team in Fiji. We’re planning to provide our other labs such as Tanzania Flying Labs with underwater drones as well in coming months. So what follows are some initial observations and lessons learned in the use of these underwater drones for data collection.

The first point to note is that underwater drones are tethered unlike most aerial drones (the yellow cable in the above photo). As such, their range is limited by the length of the tether. On the plus side, the drones we tested in Fiji have 2-3 hours of battery life. Another difference between underwater and aerial drones is that the former can only piloted manually while the latter can be programmed to operate autonomously. The reason is simple: GPS is not available underwater. The underwater drones we tested in the Pacific do have various features that seek to make the manual piloting easier. The PowerRay, for example, offers altitude (or rather depth) control to keep the drone more or less at the same depth while the Trident offers a stabilization feature.

Another difference between underwater and aerial drones is that the later are almost always piloted Beyond Visual Line of Site (BVLOS) contrary to most aerial drones. In other words, one loses sight of underwater drones within just a few meters of depth whereas aerial drones can be seen from several hundred meters away. This makes knowing where the drone is relative to your position rather challenging. An underwater drone pilot will have live video footage of what the drone sees right in front of them, but that can be quite limiting when operating BVLOS. On the plus side, the Trident software does include a helpful compass feature, displaying the direction that the drone is pointing in, which is a plus. But still, manually operating a drone BVLOS whether it flies or swim is particularly tricky.

Screenshot 2018-03-27 22.11.44

In addition, piloting the underwater drones to swim in straight lines (to do transects, for example) or to swim around a point of interest from different angles (to create 3D models or 360 panoramic photos) is equally challenging and takes some serious practice. And even with said practice, we found ourselves having to try and manually correct for invisible currents at various depths. Aerial drones can automatically correct for winds, thanks to GPS.

In many ways, the experience I had in piloting these underwater drones reminded me a lot of what it was like to fly the Phantom 1 when it came out in 2013. It was a very manual experience with a fixed camera. The same is true of the underwater drones. In other words, if you want the camera to capture a particular scene, you had to point the Phantom 1 towards the scene in question and adjust the altitude accordingly, often from hundreds of meters away, which meant quite a bit of guesswork (and luck) until you clocked many hours of practice. The underwater drones have fixed high definition cameras, meaning no gimbals to provide the very smooth footage that the Phantom 4 provides today. What’s more, the cameras of the underwater drones are forward facing. This means you’d need to attach a GoPro or similar camera to the bottom of the underwater drone if you wanted to capture vertical imagery to produce bathymetry maps.

Screenshot 2018-03-27 22.38.00

I have no doubt that like the Phantom’s 3 iterations since the first model came out half-a-decade ago, the future iterations of the Trident and PowerRay will make equally important strides. In the meantime, below are some initial recommendations based on our lessons learned. If we’re missing any, then please let us know!

  • Practice in a pool: We spent several days practicing in a swimming pool, i.e., a controlled environment. The upside: you can really get the hang of it without dealing with waves, currents, etc. The downside: once you hit the open Ocean, it’s a whole other ballgame.
  • You need a crew: In addition to the pilot, a spotter and a “tetherer” are needed. The purpose of the spotter is to provide the pilot with situational awareness, i.e., where the drone is in relation to the pilot and the area of interest. The tetherer is responsible for ensuring that the tether remains loose and untangled. As for the pilot, same deal as manually operating aerial drones: gamers will make for the best pilots. Seasoned divers may potentially feel more at home than others when piloting underwater drones.
  • Go slow & Transects: The underwater drones we used allow pilots to select different speeds. Stay on the slow speed when capturing footage. When photographing or filming marine life, we found that simply letting the drone drift produced some of the best results in terms of visual quality. Going to slow is also a good idea if you’re looking to run transects. The key there is to use the live video feed to identify a point in the distance and then to swim as straight as possible towards that point.
  • Image quality: You’ll want to play around with the various image settings available for the underwater drones before you go on important dives. The wrong image setting will make the resulting footage look very pale or bleached in some cases. Also, dives on cloudy days and at night tend to produce better image quality given that reflections from the sun are minimized. The underwater drones have powerful forward facing lights that help to illuminate areas of  interest.
  • Stay away from debris and sand: These can get into the motors and lead to you having a very bad day. In particular, do not “land” your drone on the ocean floor. Sand and drones don’t get along and this is true of both swimming and flying drones.
  • Visibility of screen: Just like aerial drones, direct sunlight and screens don’t work well together. Being able to see the screen on your table or smart phone to see the live video feed from your drone along with relevant operational readings such speed, altitude, etc.), is really key. But when you’re out on boat with no “dark room” to properly see the screen, then best of luck to you. We recommend taking a large, thick towel to throw over your head (another reason why a spotter is key) or using the VR Goggles provided with the PowerRay. Towels are also a good idea to thoroughly dry the drone after you take it out of the water and before you start removing the tether.
  • Wash, Rinse, Repeat: It’s really important to thoroughly rinse your drone after each day of diving, especially if you’re diving in the Ocean (i.e., salt water).

Screenshot 2018-03-27 22.33.02

Based on this experience, here’s what we’d like to see in future iterations of underwater drones:

  • Cameras: Marine scientists typically use handheld cameras with 24 megapixels. While the underwater drone cameras are HD, their megapixels is at most 12 (and less when using video). Of course, divers (the human kind) can’t stay too deep for too long whereas the underwater drones can, so yes 12 megapixels is better than nothing. But 24 is still better than 12. In addition, having a gimbal like the ones used in aerial drones to stabilize the footage and enable the pilot to point the drone in different directions without having to change the position of the drone would be a distinct advantage.
  • Manual support: More features that support the manual piloting of the drone by providing greater situational awareness—like the compass feature of the Trident—would be a huge plus. As would a better system to manage the tether.
  • Feature detection software: To automatically identify specific features that are most commonly of interest, such as identifying and counting specific species of fish and corals, for example.
  • Hybrids: There are compelling reasons to integrate underwater drones with surface water drones, i.e., to build a 2-in-1 solution. Surface water drones can be GPS enabled. As such, they can be programmed just like aerial drones. And with a downward facing camera, said surface water drones could automatically create create bathymetry maps by swimming just half a meter or less below the surface (using an extended antennae). Now add a forward facing drone and a tether and you have yourself a diving drone as well.

Many thanks to DFAT, Atlassian Foundation, Solve MIT, the University of the South Pacific and OpenROV for their invaluable support and partnership on Pacific Flying Labs. Our labs in Fiji trained young women between the ages of 12-18 years old on how to use these underwater drones to explore the marine life around them and study the health of corals. Pacific Flying Labs will continue to use these underwater drones for a range of projects in the months to come. Below is a short compilation of some of the underwater footage that our Pacific Flying Labs captured with the drones in question. Enjoy!

 

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Field Testing Medical Cargo Drones in the DR

Posted on March 1, 2018 | 1 comment

My team and I at WeRobotics recently teamed up with Emprende and other partners in the Dominican Republic (DR) to field test the delivery of cargo by drone. A more detailed and technical report is being prepared; similar to the one we published on our cargo drone field tests in the Peruvian Amazon Rainforest. In the meantime, this blog post serves as a short overview of the project, which was kindly supported by the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB).

We programmed the DR drones to transport medical supplies between local hospitals and remote villages in the mountains, several hours north of Santo Domingo. In addition to the tests, we provided local students and others with hands-on training on how to operate both multi-rotor drones and hybrid drones for cargo delivery. Building local capacity is central to our work at WeRobotics.

Transporting medicines and patient samples between hospitals (the red markers on the map above) and remote clinics (green & purple markers) in the mountains of the DR can be slow and expensive. While roads to these remote clinics do exist, they are not always paved and those that are paved are sometimes impassable due to the rivers that cross them, even during the dry season. Furthermore, while the road network in the mountains of the DR is impressively widespread, the local ownership of motorized vehicles is certainly not, nor is the availability of public transportation.

Villagers in these remote regions earn very little income and do not have the time to spend an entire day traveling to and from the nearest hospital to get their blood tested even though said hospital may “only” be 20 or 30 kilometers away. The reason this takes a day is because there is often only one “bus” (usually a truck) that goes to and from town once a day, leaving early in the morning and returning mid-afternoon. And the “bus” is obviously not free. Some patients are in pain, and simply unable to just “hop” on the back of a truck driving over bumpy roads for an hour or more under the sun. As such, doctors working at these hospitals and clinics are keen to explore other ways to expedite the collection and testing of patient samples and distribution of essential medicines.

In some cases, remote villages will have a small clinic. But these small clinics often lack a continuous supply of medicines. This is particularly problematic for patients who need to take specific medicines on a regular basis. What’s more, sending patient samples that require a specialized laboratory for testing purposes and then receiving results of this testing is also a cumbersome task that becomes complicated. These logistical challenges can potentially be alleviated by introducing the use of cargo drones.

Emprende invited WeRobotics to build local capacity and evaluate the use of drones for the collection and delivery of patient samples and medicines, and to field test two drones in the process. This local training and cargo flights took place over a 10-day period in two different mountainous regions of the DR. The training and flight operations were carried out in partnership with Emprende and other stakeholders. The purpose of these tests was to better understand the opportunities and limitations of using affordable solutions for the rapid delivery of essential supplies in the DR. As such, the field tests sought to better understand the failure points and failure rates of the technology while developing streamlined workflows to enable the safe and regular delivery of essential items in the DR. Understanding failure points and rates is essential to developing a preventive maintenance strategy. The latter serves to increase the reliability and longevity of aircraft. In addition, understanding the limitations of affordable solutions in relevant social, geographical and environmental contexts was one of the overarching goals of the field tests.

The field tests were carried out using 2 types of general-use drones that were adapted for cargo delivery: DJI’s M600 hexacopter drone and Vertical Technologies’ DeltaQuad, a new VTOL (Vertical Takeoff and Landing) fixed wing drone, also called a QuadPlane configuration. A total of 31 complete flights were logged (not counting shorter test flights). The types of cargo transported included items of up to 2kg including water, sample tubes, some medicines and even avocados and energy bars for testing purposes. The distances covered by the cargo drones ranged between 5 kilometers and 12 kilometers, with an altitude difference of up to 250 meters in altitude between takeoff and landing. Three technical failures were experienced and exhaustively investigated. These are detailed in the upcoming technical report.

The growing healthcare needs in the DR coupled with expensive and slow cargo delivery options makes it clear that alternative solutions are needed. Our recent trainings and field tests in the DR confirm that cargo drones can be part of the solution. That said, more field research needs to be carried out to identify the most compelling and sustainable delivery routes in the DR. This research is currently being conducted by Emprende in partnership with local universities.

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Empowering Youths in Fiji to Explore their Islands with Aerial and Marine Robotics

Posted on February 22, 2018 | Leave a comment

Fiji was largely spared the wrath of Cyclone Gita, but the high-end category 4 Cyclone devastated the islands of Tonga nearby. As typically happens, the drone companies that international organizations are now hiring to carry out aerial surveys of the  damage come from Australia and/or New Zealand. These foreign companies usually arrive weeks after the disaster. They also charge high consulting fees, and rarely speak the local language. In addition, they typically stay a week or two at most, which means aerial imagery is not available during the recovery and reconstruction phase. Lastly, foreign companies rarely if ever have time to build local capacity, let alone the know-how to sustainably transfer drone technology to local partners.

Our mission at WeRobotics is to localize appropriate robotics technology by placing drone solutions directly in the hands of local professionals. We do this through our growing network of Flying Labs—local action labs run entirely by local teams who we train and equip. This doesn’t mean that foreign drone companies don’t have an important role to play in the aftermath of major disasters. But it does mean that national and international organizations should absolutely prioritize hiring local drone pilots and imagery analysts. This helps to build local capacity and create local jobs. It also enables local participation in data collection and avoids delays as well as possible biases in the collection of said data. In sum, when the need for aerial data cannot be met locally, then yes, national and international organizations should absolutely turn to foreign companies to collect aerial data. But if these organizations ignore or displace the local capacity that does exist, then this is really problematic. Said organizations should invest in building the capacity of local youths, not sideline them.

This explains why our growing network of Flying Labs around the world are deeply committed to training the youths in their countries on how to use drones safely, responsibly and effectively for social good projects. Today’s youths are the drone pilots of the immediate future. This is why our Pacific Flying Labs is teaming up with a local girl’s orphanage and other youths in Fiji to map informal settlements for a disaster risk reduction project. The youths will learn how to use drones safely, responsibly and effectively. Our Pacific Labs will also teach them how to use Ground Control Points (GCPs) and how to process the resulting imagery to create high quality maps as well as 3D models. In addition, they will try out Hangar and Survae to create additional information products. In sum, the purpose of this project is to introduce local youths to the basics of drone mapping so they can participate in the data collection process and learn the skills they need to participate in the  workforce of the 21st century.

Once the aerial data is processed, the resulting maps will be printed out on large banners. Youths will team up into different groups to analyze these maps. They will first identify major areas of concern. For example, they will analyze housing infrastructure, drainage and environmental issues, disaster risks and the long term impact of climate change on these informal settlements. Equally importantly, youths will propose concrete solutions for each of the concerns they’ve identified. They will then present their project and findings to local, national and international organizations at conference organized by Pacific Flying Labs and the University of the South Pacific (USP) on March 16th.

After the workshop, the Coordinator of Pacific Flying Labs, Amrita Lal, plans to head to Tonga where she will team up with a Tongan classmate of hers from USP to carry out aerial surveys to support the recovery and reconstruction efforts. Amrita is so committed to this that she has decided to skip her undergraduate graduation ceremony to be in Tonga. This will make her the one and only female drone pilot from the region to be involved in the response to Cylcone Gita. Her classmate, who recently graduated from USP, will be the only Tongan drone pilot involved in the response to Gita. He will hold on to one of the drones from Pacific Flying Labs so that he can continue mapping as needed. In the future, we hope that Amrita and other drone pilots from Fiji, Tonga, Vanuatu and elsewhere will be the ones hired by national and international organizations to support humanitarian efforts in their countries.

Our Pacific Flying Labs will also be using the Trident, an underwater drone from OpenROV, one of our Technology Partners. Pacific Labs will train girls from an orphanage in Fiji and other local youths. This will enable youths to learn the skills they need to thrive in the workforce of the 21st Century. It will also give them the opportunity to explore the marine life around their island from a completely new perspective.

The marine robotics project will be led by our Pacific Flying Labs Coordinator, Ms. Amrita Lal. Local youths will be using underwater drones to explore and evaluate the health of coral reefs. The location selected has sea-grass, bare sand and corals in all directions. Participating youths will have been trained the day before at a swimming pool at the University of the South Pacific (USP) on how to operate underwater drones to capture live video footage and photographs. They will identify and count different species of fish—particularly Butterflyfish since these serve as an important indicator of coral reef health. They will also seek to identify and count Parrotfish, Surgeonfish, Tangs, Sea Urchins, Molluscs and Clams. In addition, youths will document the presence or absence of coral bleaching and diseases. While some initial visual analysis will be carried out on site with the live footage, the bulk of the analysis will take place at USP’s GIS Lab the following day.

Dr. Stuart Kininmont, a Senior Lecturer at USP’s School of Marine Studies, will be joining our marine robotics expedition. Dr. Stuart teaches Coral Reef Ecology, Marine Spatial Planning and Marine Geology and Sedimentology. In addition, two Marine Science Teaching Assistants will join the expedition to facilitate the data collection. Dr. Stuart will also teach youths on how to identify and count relevant marine life species when we’re back at the USP lab. Youths will be given out pre-made charts with photos and descriptions of relevant species and will study the recorded footage frame by frame to document and analyze the health of the coral reefs.

After carrying out their visual analyses of the footage, we’ll work with participating youths to help them produce formal presentations of the project along with their findings. They’ll learn how to create a create a professional slide deck and how to give a compelling presentation. They will rehearse their presentations in front of each other in order to get further feedback. These youths will then give their talks at the opening of the Pacific Flying Labs Conference that week. This conference will bring relevant local, national and regional stakeholders to create a road map for Pacific Labs. Training youths across the region on how to use appropriate robotics for social good is a key priority of the labs.

We’re also planning to explore what other types of drone-derived information products might also be useful for marine scientists and biologists. Colleagues at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, for example, use diver-operated underwater cameras to take images of coral reefs which they process into high-definition 3D models. These models informs their “high-level ecological questions (community & landscape ecology: community structure & composition, spatial patterning, coral condition, structural complexity, etc) for peer-reviewed publication.” The models also “provide baseline assessment data for marine managers and communities.” We’re keen to explore whether the high-definition 4K cameras on the underwater drones can provide sufficiently high-resolution data to create high-definition 3D models usable for advanced scientific research.

We’re excited to work on this project with Amrita and local youth; a project made possible thanks our close partnership with USP’s GIS Lab and the generous support of the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), Atlassian Foundation and USP. In addition, we want to thank our Technology Partner OpenROV for generously donating a Trident to our South Pacific Flying Labs.

Many thanks to USP for their close partnership on South Pacific Flying Labs and to the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) and the Atlassian Foundation for their generous support of Pacific Labs.

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How Mosquitos are Hitching a Ride on Drones to Reduce Zika

Posted on January 11, 2018 | Leave a comment

I had the distinct honor of serving on the expert panel of judges for the prestigious International Drones and Robotics for Good Awards in Dubai for 2 years. It was there that I first came across the path-breaking work of the Insect Pest Control Laboratory (IPCL) of the Joint FAO/IAEA Division of Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture (NAFA). Their proposed solution: to fight Zika and other mosquito-borne diseases by using drones. I was impressed with their innovative approach and pleased that their pitch was recognized as such by my fellow judges in Dubai: the FAO/IAEA team was selected as one of 10 semi-finalists from over 1,000 competing teams.

I therefore reached out to IPCL when USAID launched their Grand Challenge on combating Zika and related diseases. I was keen to explore whether WeRobotics could help translate IPCL’s pitch in Dubai into reality. To be sure, combining FAO/IAEA’s world renowned expertise in pest control with our demonstrated expertise in the application of robotics for positive social impact could really make a difference. Thankfully, USAID was equally excited and kindly awarded us with this grant to design, prototype and field-test a mosquito release mechanism specifically for drones.

Mosquitoes are one of the world’s biggest killers, responsible for spreading deadly diseases including Zika, dengue and malaria. Among the many ways being researched to combat this threat is the Sterile Insect Technique (SIT) – flooding the environment with non-biting, sterile male mosquitoes, which after mating produce sterile eggs and a reduction in the local mosquito population. SIT is a complementary tool in pest-control efforts. This form of insect birth control has been used successfully for decades to combat insects, including the Mediterranean fruit fly, the screwworm and the tsetse fly, and is now being adapted to help fight disease-transmitting mosquitos. One of the challenges for the potential use of this technique is efficiently spreading millions of sterile mosquitoes – this is where drones come in. So for the past year we have been working together with IPCL on a drone-based mosquito dispersion mechanism, as part of USAID’s Grand Challenge on combating Zika and related diseases.

You can read here about the motivations behind using mosquito-releasing drones for vector control. As we’ve recently received some media coverage on our joint project (e.g., BBC, IEEE Spectrum, TechExplore, DigitalTrends, Interna-tional Business Times and Internet of Business) we wanted to share the latest developments on our prototype.

While release mechanisms exist for fruit flies (in particular for manned aircraft), mosquitoes are alas far more fragile. Developing a release mechanism for mosquitoes is a lot more difficult, presenting a number of design challenges ranging from the shape of the mosquito storage unit and its nozzle, to the type of ejection unit used to physically disperse them. Quality of the mosquitoes as they exit the mechanism is paramount; the mosquitoes must be able to find mates, and any damage to their wings or body can prevent them from successfully competing with non-sterile males.

In addition, the mosquitoes need to be kept between 4-10 °C to keep them in a sleep-like state so that they don’t get “active” and hurt each other when placed into the small release mechanism. So the challenge here is to maintain the cold-chain as efficiently as possible; not only during the drone flight, but also during transportation to the takeoff site and setup of the drone platform.

Our immediate direct goal is to release 50,000-100,000 mosquitoes over one square kilometer in a single drone flight. While a range of ejection solutions were considered, we’re currently using a mechanism based on a simple rotating cylinder with small slots that transfers mosquitoes in small batches. This mechanism was developed for other fragile insects within the ERC REVOLINC project (PCT/EP2017/059832). To chill the mosquitoes we’re using a passive cooling technique based on phase change materials.

The first step in validating the system is lab tests. Our partners at IPCL have reared hundreds of thousands of mosquitoes (photo above) and passed them through the device in various configurations, measuring their resistance to the mechanical stress of the mechanism, wind resistance and various other details. The release mechanism was extensively tested with real mosquitoes (Aedes aegypti) at IPCL in Vienna with further tests scheduled for early December.

Lab tests help us characterize our mechanism in controlled conditions, but the real proof of the mechanism’s efficacy must be done in the mosquito’s natural habitat. We are thus finalizing our plans to field test the release mechanism with live mosquitoes in Latin America in early 2018. IPCL will be using mosquito traps during these tests to evaluate the survival and dispersal of mosquitoes from the mechanism, comparing it to ground-based release and giving us clues on the impact of aerially-released sterile mosquitoes on the overall mosquito population.

Stay tuned for the results of our field tests in coming months!

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Entire Fleet of Cargo Drones Tested in the Amazon Rainforest

Posted on October 18, 2017 | Leave a comment

Cross-posed from WeRobotics.

In June 2017, WeRobotics teamed up with the Peruvian Ministry of Health and Becton, Dickinson and Company (BD) to field test a fleet of affordable cargo drones in the Amazon Rainforest. BD is a leading, multi-billion dollar medical technology company. The majority of the flights were carried out by our Peru Flying Labs and UAV del Peru. During the course of two weeks, we field-tested a dozen drones including fixed-wings and hybrid drones; carrying a variety of medical payloads (medicines, diagnostic tests, blood samples) across a range of distances (stretching from 2km to 126km). These comprehensive field tests comprised over 40 flights and built on the initial tests we carried out with the Peruvian Ministry of Health in December 2016 and February 2017. Our detailed report on these recent flight tests is available here (PDF). High-resolution photos can be found here and live tweets of the field tests with additional photos and videos are available here.

In addition to testing the impact of drone flights on blood samples, BD carried out a number of finding mission to better understand the full range of health care challenges that local communities face in this region of the Amazon. The interviews also sought to provide a better understanding of the actual status of the health care systems already running in the region. While in Contamana, for example, the BD team met a woman who had arrived the night before from a remote community following serious complications in childbirth. Since drugs for treatment weren’t available in her community, she had to travel for 5 hours (3 hours walking and 2 hours by boat) while enduring postpartum hemorrhaging, to reach the hospital in Contamana. The use of a drone would have allowed emergency supplies to be delivered within 30-60 minutes directly to the remote community where the woman gave birth. This is just one of multiple findings documented by BD during the field tests; findings that indicate a clear unmet need for transporting medical supplies and, almost more importantly, patient specimens to allow for appropriate diagnosis.

At one point during our field tests, the main airport in the region, Pucallpa Airport, had to close and ground all manned aircraft for half-a-day due to dense fog, a common occurrence in the Amazon. If Contamana had been out of emergency supplies when the woman reached the hospital, it is doubtful that she or her baby would have lived unless a plane could be dispatched to deliver the supplies. What was so striking about all manned aircraft being grounded due to the fog is that it had no effect on the cargo drone flights; the drones could keep flying while a dozen manned aircraft lay idle at the airport. The drones had the entire regional airspace to themselves. Naturally, we still followed all drone regulations as required by the Peruvian Aviation Authorities.

One of the main goals of the recent field tests was to evaluate the performance and reliability of more affordable drones. Fact is, cargo drones that cost over USD 10,000 are unlikely to be appropriate for certain use-cases and contexts in the Amazon Rainforest. This not only due to budgetary constraints and the need for a viable business model but also because more expensive drones tend to be more sophisticated, thus requiring more training and often more infrastructure. The majority of drones used during the field tests were locally assembled in Lima with our Peru Flying Labs and tested there for two weeks before taking flight over the Amazon. This local capacity building strategy is central to all our Flying Labs. Furthermore, it is typically easier to repair affordable drones locally. Affordable drones also tend to be easier and cheaper to transport. In the photo above, two such drones are tied to the back of a motor taxi. Finally, there is little need for very high frequency flights in the Amazon, which means that more expensive drones and sophisticated drones may not be necessary.

Working with affordable drones obviously comes with tradeoffs, however. One of the goals of the field tests was to better understand these tradeoffs in the context of the Amazon Rainforest—not only technical tradeoffs but tradeoffs in process as well, e.g., preventive maintenance. In total, 93% of our cargo drone flights were successful with 3 flights failing shortly after takeoff, posing no physical risk to anyone. It is important to note that the root cause of two of these failures may have been linked to preventive maintenance issues (process) rather than a technical problem. The third failure was in some ways to be expected since it was specifically an experimental takeoff meant to experiment with certain parameters. In other words it was a controlled failure, as noted in our report. Telemetry, weather data and flight statistics are also available in the report, which is the only detailed, transparent and publicly available report on cargo drone trials to date.

To learn more about our lessons learned from the recent field tests in the Amazon Rainforest and our future cargo delivery projects, be sure to join our webinar next month, November 15th, at 12pm New York Time. Information on how to sign up will be made available via our email list and via social media (follow us on Twitter and Facebook). If you’d like to join future WeRobotics projects, be sure to join our roster.

In the meantime, we sincerely thank the Peruvian Ministry of Health as well as regional and local doctors and clinics in Pucallpa, Masisea, Tiruntan and Contamana for their partnership and invaluable support. We also express our very kind thanks to the Peruvian Civil Aviation Authorities (DGAC) and the airport authorities in Pucallpa for granting us permissions for the field tests. Sincerest thanks to Becton, Dickinson and Company (BD) for their partnership and support for the field tests and to the whole team at UAV del Peru for making these field tests possible. Big thanks as well to all the volunteers at Peru Flying Labs for the countless hours they put into the field tests. We’d also like to thank our technology partner, Oriol Lopez, and the missionaries in Pucallpa who lent us their airfield in San Jose.

For questions/comments and media enquiries, please contact Dr. Patrick Meier (patrick@werobotics.org) and Dr. Adam Curry (adam.curry@bd.com).

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Digital Humanitarians in Space: Planet Launches Rapid Response Team

Posted on July 13, 2017 | 2 comments

Planet has an unparalleled constellation of satellites in orbit. In addition to their current constellation of 130 micro-satellites, they have 5 RapidEye satellites and the 7 SkySat satellites (recently acquired from Google). What’s more, 48 new micro-satellites were just launched into orbit this July, bringing the total number of Planet satellites to 190. And once the 48 satellites begin imaging, Planet will have global, daily coverage of the entire Earth, covering over 150 million square kilometers every day. Never before has the humanitarian community had access to such a vast amount of timely satellite imagery.

As described in my book, Digital Humanitarians, this vast amount of new data adds to the rapidly growing Big Data challenge that humanitarian organizations are facing. As such, what humanitarians need is not just data philanthropy—i.e., free and rapid access to relevant data—they also need insight philanthropy. This is where Planet’s new Rapid Response Team comes in.

Planet just launched this new digital volunteer program in partnership with the Digital Humanitarian Network to help ensure that Planet’s data and insights get to the right people at the right time to accelerate and improve humanitarian response. After major disasters hit, members of the Rapid Response Team can provide the latest satellite images available and/or geospatial analysis directly to field-based aid organizations.

So if you’re an established humanitarian group and need rapid access to satellite imagery and/or analysis after major disasters, simply activate the Digital Humanitarian Network. You can request satellite images of disaster affected areas on a daily basis as well as before/after analysis (sliders) of those areas as shown above. This is an exciting and generous new resource being made available to the international humanitarian community by Planet, so please do take advantage.

In the meantime, if you have any questions or suggestions, please feel free to get in touch by email or via the comments section below. I serve as an advisor to Planet and am keen to make the Rapid Response initiative as useful as possible to humanitarian organizations.

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Posted in Big Data, Crisis Mapping, Humanitarian Technologies, Satellite Imagery

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