Coastal Restoration

To monitor whether whales are experiencing stress, researchers today have to do things that seem, paradoxically, kind of stressful. A team of Olin College students is developing a higher-tech, less obtrusive way to harvest these samples of whale mucus: a drone that hovers over the animals to collect samples. They chosen an evocative name for their robotic tool: Snot Bot.

Forget helicopters: Quadrotors are where it's at! These four-bladed machines are revolutionizing everything from package delivery to search and rescue. Anthony explains how they work and why the U.S. Air Force has such a strong interest in them.

While the recent drone crash in Yellowstone could prove to be devastating to Grand Prismatic Spring, it’s not the only item that has found its way into the park’s famed thermal features, such as these at Old Faithful. ©Travis J. Andrews Anyone who has visited Yellowstone National Park can attest to the beauty of Grand Prismatic Spring, a body of water that has a deep, brilliant blue color at its center and measures 370 feet in diameter. The pool is also recognized around the world for its other stunning tints, produced by the bright, multihued algae and bacteria around its edges. Since Yellowstone was declared America’s first national park in 1872, thermal features such as this have been protected for our enjoyment and that of future generations. But on August 2, 2014, a tourist from the Netherlands, Theodorus Van Vliet, crashed his drone into the spring. This incident occurred despite a ban that was instituted on June 20, 2014, on all UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) in all National

Drones can provide a low-impact, unobtrusive platform to observe marine mammals in the wild, but regulations haven't caught up.

Scientists know so much about what’s happening above the surface of the water, but due to a lack of sensory equipment, they know comparatively little about what’s going on below. Most data for studying sharks, or any ocean phenomenon, is gathered via buoy (which are immobile), satellite (inexact, usually confined to surface measurement and not always in range) or scientists on a ship (time consuming and expensive). When predicting the weather on land, meteorologists can lean on countless weather stations to gather data and generate the forecast.

This is where drones come in. Autonomous craft are reshaping the way scientists study the ocean and two local bay area companies, Liquid Robotics and upstart Saildrone, funded by the Marine Science and Technology Foundation (founded by Google chairman Eric Schmidt), have been making waves with their unmanned gliders and sailboats. Saildrone recently completed a voyage around Hawaii and back to the Bay Area with its autonomous sailboats. But now the group must prove its crafts can do more than simply get from point A to point B — like gather critical ocean data.

Sensor for picking up acoustic transponders on great white sharks.

“The next stage is to demonstrate that we can do real, valuable science,” says Saildrone lead researcher Richard Jenkins.

On a warm afternoon last summer in the hills west of Corvallis, three Oregon State University students went hiking in the McDonald-Dunn Forest when they became “lost.” A few scattered belongings — ...