Belinda Lansley – UCVision

Drone meeting in Auckland September 2023

The University of Canterbury research team from the $10mil MBIE funded Drones with tools project, flew to Auckland on 4 September to have an in-person meeting with the University of Auckland team. These meetings are crucial for integration of all the different parts of the drone project.

The day started with talks given by key researchers from the drone project plus some presentations by project students from the University of Auckland. There was then discussion over the drone design which is a planetary hex drone design by Associate Professor Karl Stol’s team.

The day concluded with two drone presentations including one peg in hole demo.

We are in an exciting phase of the project with the final drone design for prototype one being ready by 1 October.

Blenheim

Maaratech Update July 2023

In July 2023 we conducted our Maaratech field work in the Marlborough region.

Using our robot Genie, we scanned both sides of 110 plants in the Cloudy Bay vineyard.

The HDR capture coupled with the close alignment between each sides meant we got the best photos yet.

We also scan 1.5ha (approx. 3,000 vines) of vines at our secondary site:

In this vineyard we made use of the row following to achieve consistent distance from the vines.

We also tested our remote control of the vehicle. Here is a picture of Matt down the road having a coffee and monitoring the robot. The robot was autonomously scanning and no one was on site to monitor it.

Richie has now mounted all the camera’s on the adjustable camera bar onto Genie (see picture below). They still need some adjustment. Hopefully we will get to test this new set up in Lincoln in July.

CSSE Drone Lab

Drone project – cutting tool

In June InFact completed a cutting tool to be attached to our drone. We already had a tool which had been designed by final project students but was a more lightweight tool. This tool can easily cut larger branches. It was interesting watching the tool being attached to our Matrice drone and the first flights using the tool look promising.

Drones

Drone Project Industry Day 2023

On 22 May 2023 the Drone Project held an industry day at Ilam Homestead. The day started with presentations from our key researchers with updates on how the project is progressing. There was a display of drones from both the University of Auckland and the University of Canterbury. We had a good turnout of industry representatives both on Zoom and in person.

In the afternoon Sam Schofield (Postdoc/PhD) did a demonstration of the Matrice drone in Ilam Gardens with the pruning tool attached. Pruning was not possible during the demo due to the trees being historic. There was also a tour of the Mechanical Engineering wind tunnel.

Several industry connections were developed during this event with ongoing benefits to the project and this will be held yearly to increase industry engagement.

Aquaculture

Meet our Team – Tim Rensen and Timothy Manning

Tim and Timothy talk about the UC Vision ROV which has recently been taken to the Marlborough Sounds for fieldwork. The ROV has successfully scanned mussel lines in mussel farms as well as taking mussel samples from the ropes. Tim and Timothy explain the benefits of using an ROV in aquaculture.

Aquaculture

ROV Development Field Trip April 2023

The UC Computer Vision Lab’s project, headed by Professor Richard Green, is working on autonomously recording stereo vision of mussel lines. This footage is then post-processed, using advanced computer vision algorithms, to determine the mussel sizes and quantities, allowing for better crop forecasting. Tim Rensen, Ori Ganoni, and Timothy Manning spent a week in Marlborough sounds and Tasman Bay testing and rapidly prototyping new control and automation software. Some of the highlights of the trip were successfully scanning sections of the mussel farm autonomously and removing mussels from the line using a prototype gripper.

Blenheim

Meet our Team – Matt Mattar

Matt Mattar has been on the UC Vision team for just over a year. We talked to him about what he does with programming robots for computer vision research which are used in vineyards. He talks about how he works on the front end of a database and doing the navigation stack for the robot. Fieldwork is a big part of the Maaratech project which he is working on. He describes what it is like out in the field.

Blenheim

Meet our Team – Niels van Antwerpen

Niels van Antwerpen did a 4th year project was to develop a detection and identification system. He trained an AI system to detect plants in a vineyard in order for the viticulturalist to go out into the vineyard and take photos and compare with photos in the past.

Niels has enjoyed Computer and software engineering at UC and working with the UC Vision team.

Watch the video of Niels talking about his time working with UC Vision.

Arboriculture

Drone Research Meeting – November 2022

In late November the UC Drone project team travelled to the University of Auckland to test the DJI Matrice drone in their very impressive wind tunnel.

The DJI Matrice drone was transported from the University of Canterbury to the University of Auckland, minus the batteries. We then borrowed some Auckland based batteries and flew the drone against a wind in the tunnel. The drone has impressive stability against the wind.

Presentations were given by both the UC and UoA teams and there were lab tours showing some of the amazing drones at the University of Auckland. It was wonderful to see what Professor Karl Stol and his research team are developing.

It was agreed that this was a very useful meeting and that we needed to have more in person meetings in the future as this is where a lot of research integration would happen.

Arboriculture

Drone fieldtrip to Amberley – August

The drone team had a trip on 23 August to Proseed in Amberley who kindly allowed us to test our drone onsite. Our final year project team with some industry support had made a cutting tool which comes out in front of the drone to cut pine catkins.

Author: Belinda Lansley