VIDEO: Student designs drone to monitor livestock
A French postgraduate student has designed a prototype drone designed to be used by farmers to monitor livestock on large and remote estates.
Marc-Alexandre Favier, from Bourg-en-Bresse, in eastern France has recently completed seven months’ research at Harper Adams University developing an unmanned aircraft for use in agriculture.
The engineering student has used an AR Drone 2 with a camera attached to the bottom to allow the user to get a bird’s eye view of the stock.
This has been tied in with a computer program, which instructs the drone to locate, recognise and track livestock.
Although the drone can be controlled via wi-fi on a computer, the ultimate aim is for farmers to be able to control it using an iPhone or smartphone.
Marc-Alexandre said his prototype was designed with Scottish sheep farmers in mind, many of whom spend large amounts of time and cover many miles monitoring their livestock.
“The idea is to combine using a quad bike with an unmanned aerial vehicle to help the shepherd not to have to spend too much time managing his flock,” he said.
“I have therefore developed a functional prototype drone to recognise and track sheep.”
See Marc-Alexandre’s prototype demonstrating how it has been programmed to track an defined object.