Aerial Imaging Technologies

Students in the a rural Wisconsin school district will soon be getting access to the internet by drone.

Any student in the district who doesn’t have a reliable internet connection at home will be able to tap into the program, significantly expanding connectivity throughout the district.

The internet-by-drone program will be paid for through a grant of $100,000 awarded by the state of Wisconsin to the school district, so that it can test ways to expand internet access in rural areas.

The drones used in the program will be provided by a drone based integration company which will create a school network that students can tap into from home through a drone-powered cellular signal.

HOW DOES IT WORK?
In order to use drones to bring the internet to students, the drone integration company will outfit each drone so that they essentially become flying cellphone towers.

The drones can then boost cell signals in the surrounding area, making signals strong enough for students to establish reliable connections that aren’t possible with existing infrastructure.

Keeping the drones in the air for long periods of time is crucial to making this approach to connectivity work.

According to the company these tethered drones are capable of staying in the air up to 42 days.

These long flight times require a lot of energy, and are only possible through the use of power cord tethers, which connect the drone to a ground-based generator.

Using a tether, a drone can stay in the air even through harsh weather, providing a strong, reliable signal the whole time.

In the event of power loss—say, if the tether is disconnected for some reason—the drones are programmed to switch to a backup battery and land automatically, avoiding the danger that could be presented if one of these huge machines were to fall suddenly from the sky.

DJI Updates Mapping & Surveying Solutions for the Phantom 4 RTK + GS RTK v2.2

Phantom 4s are not always easy to find on the DJI store these days, including the RTK model launched toward the end of 2018.

But a revamped version is set to be made available, which features updates to provide more intuitive controls and give users more flexibility in mission ex*****on. The updates to DJI’s Phantom 4 RTK include:

● A new Cloud PPK Service, which enables image uploads and PPK corrections right in the GS RTK app.

● The ability to break large areas into multiple flight missions automatically using the Block Segmentation feature, improving the efficiency in mission planning and final map accuracy.

● A new tool called Absolute Altitude Flight, which ensures mission repeatability and consistency across different operators.

● By using the D-RTK 2 High Precision GNSS Mobile Station as an RTK rover, users can now enjoy more flexibility in mission planning and ex*****on.

“The product improvements we are introducing at InterGeo are significant steps to solidifying DJI’s role as a provider of a next-generation geospatial data collection platform – an essential tool and an integral driver of growth for countless service providers and solution developers,” said Dr. Barbara Stelzner, Director, Marketing and Corporate Communication, DJI Europe.

Hawaiian flower, thought extinct, rediscovered by a drone.

Researchers dispatched a drone into the Hawaiian skies to observe an extremely biodiverse area on a remote part of Kauai's Kalalau Valley. The scientists soon realized they had rediscovered a flower species that was thought to be extinct.

According to a statement from the National Tropical Botanical Garden, Hibiscadelphus woodii was discovered on a vertical cliff face. Most sections of this area of the valley are inaccessible to humans because of the steep landscape.

NTBG has been using drone technology for the past two and a half years to get a look at the unique flora.

https://www.staradvertiser.com/2019/04/19/breaking-news/kauai-researchers-rediscover-native-hawaiian-flower-once-thought-extinct/