Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University students and professors have designed an unmanned aircraft that will help keep poachers from killing sharks and whales near Ecuador.
The unmanned aircraft will be used to prevent poaching in the Pacific Ocean around the Galapagos Islands, an area rich in marine life.
The goal is eventually to have a fleet of about 30 such aircraft in a few years to monitor that area, according to Charlie Reinholtz, Embry-Riddle professor/chairman of the department of mechanical engineering and faculty project leader.
Embry-Riddle has been working for the past year and half on the project, collaborating with a group of faculty and students at the Universidad San Francisco de Quito (USFQ) in Ecuador, which has a research station in the Galapagos.
The project is also being done in conjunction with the Galapagos National Park.
Testing around the Galapagos Islands of the unmanned plane that has been built by the team in Ecuador will begin this summer. Other testing on the video systems and auto-pilot capabilities have been conducted locally on smaller aircraft.
A film crew working for Discovery Channel’s “Daily Planet” show, which airs in Canada, was at Embry-Riddle recently and a segment may be airing in Canada later this week. Gangs of poachers have been killing large numbers of protected whales and sharks in the more than 50,000 square miles of ocean around the Galapagos Islands, an area too vast and costly for Ecuadorian authorities to patrol with manned aircraft, Embry-Riddle officials said.
“They have other tools, but they don’t have anything that would be as effective as flying the UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) and looking for poachers,” Reinholtz said. “The number of poachers being caught is pretty small, but the problem is much bigger than the number of people being caught.”
Poachers have been caught killing hundreds of sharks in one outing. Poachers cut the fins off of the sharks and throw the shark’s body back into the ocean, Reinholtz said. The fins are sold, he said, for example, to eat in soup.
The drones being developed by the Embry-Riddle and Ecuador teams will patrol the ocean using infrared sensors to detect people and boats and stream live video to authorities at the National Park. Officials at the park would then contact the Ecuadorian Navy, which would send a boat out to look for the poacher.
“A lot of this is a deterrent,” Reinholtz said. “If people poaching know there are aircraft in the sky monitoring their activity, they will be less likely to poach — we hope.”
Reinholtz said “one of the biggest environmental concerns in the oceans is the loss of shark population.”
“I know some people don’t like sharks but everybody has to recognize they are an important part of the ecosystem. Without sharks, there are other species that would be in danger of becoming extinct.”
Embry-Riddle and the university in Ecuador contributed a total of $40,000 for research, equipment and other components.
The unmanned planes, dubbed Piquero, the Spanish word for a native bird in the Galapagos Islands, will cost about $5,000 to $10,000 each and fuel will be about $2,400 a year. The plane weighs 55 pounds and has a 12-foot wingspan.
The collaboration on this project with the university in Ecuador started from a professor in that country who is a graduate of Embry-Riddle.
Embry-Riddle also has had a longstanding relationship with the university where students there can study for two years at the Daytona Beach campus, Reinholtz said.
Snorri Gudmundsson , an Embry-Riddle aerospace engineering professor, who worked on the aerodynamic design and wings, went with Reinholtz a year ago to see how the plane would be used and took a boat to two of the islands.
“It’s a very noble cause. I’m very happy to be a part of it,” Gudmundsson said. “The wildlife there is very pristine. The waters on the islands are extremely clean for that reason; there are a lot of poachers that go down there to try to catch some of those species. If this airplane can be used to stop some of that, that will be fantastic.”
Steven Bohlemann, 23, of Westin, a senior aerospace engineering major, has been doing testing on the engine that will be used in the planes.
“I think it’s an awesome project,” he said. “This isn’t a project for a competition where we finish it and that’s it. We as a group can come together and provide a small solution and make a difference.”
Embry-Riddle doctoral student Jaime Rubio, 24, of Toledo, Spain, the student leader on the team, said it’s important to help other countries that don’t have the same resources as others. He’s a scuba diver and has loved sharks since he was a child.
“It’s gives them the means to take care of their own environment,” Rubio said.
The other local workers on the project are Heidi Steinhauer, Embry-Riddle associate professor of engineering, and student Nishant Chaudhary, a native of Mumbai, India.
Reinholtz said officials in Ecuador would like to use the planes in the future to check on oil spills, monitor whale and turtle migrations, feeding habits of birds in the ocean, and track goats in the national park.
Source: Daytona Beach News Journal