Wind Tunnels – UCVision

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.

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.

Industry Event for the Drones with Tools project 14…

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

Category: Wind Tunnels

Drone Project Industry Day 2023

Drone Research Meeting – November 2022

Industry Event for the Drones with Tools project 14…