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.
Last week on 14 June, an Industry event was held for Professor Richard Green’s $10mil drones with tools project which is funded by MBIE. The project has a key research team from CSSE and Mechanical Engineering, University of Canterbury, let by Prof. Dan Zhou, as well as a team led by Assoc. Prof Karl Stol from the University of Auckland. Industry partners were invited to see progress on this interesting project which started last October.
The event was located at the UC Club where research presentations were given by the key researchers as well as lab tours of the Mechanical Engineering wind tunnels and the Drone lab located in Computer Science and Software Engineering department. We were lucky to have warm sunny winter weather and there were many interesting discussions had about the research.
This project will span five years and aims to enable drones to use tools with high precision in mid-air in difficult changeable settings. The goal is to create technology that can be used in forestry, testing power lines or in the construction industry
