Airware Says Drones Could Save Rhinos From Extinction

US start-up Airware has developed a specialised Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) to stop poachers from decimating the rhino population in Kenya.

The company says that the tests carried out over the winter holiday period prove that using autopilot solutions, UAVs (popularly known as ‘drones’) can become a viable tool for wildlife conservation.

Airware is not the only organisation working in this direction: last year, Google donated $5 million to the World Wild Fund for Nature, which pioneered the use of drones to protect endangered species in Nepal.

Endangered species

Airware (formerly Unmanned Innovation) manufactures and sells autopilot solutions for UAVs. It was founded in 2010 by Jonathan Downey, who gathered support from Andreessen Horowitz and Google Ventures to bring his vision of commercial drone flights to life.

To this end, the company develops modular hardware solutions that run open source software based on the Linux kernel.

Airware plans to launch a commercial drone platform later this year. At the moment, it is helping the US Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) develop guidelines around the use of drones for civilian purposes, which include procedures for automated emergency landing in the event of a communications failure.

“The commercial drone space is a major growth market with applications like precision agriculture, infrastructure inspection and search and rescue,” said Downey.

To test the platform’s capabilities, Airware decided to track black rhinos across the Ol Pejeta wildlife sanctuary in Kenya. By September 2013, there were just 539 wild rhinos left in Africa, with one killed every 11 hours.

The drones designed for wildlife protection feature Airware’s autopilot platform and control software, along with fixed and gimbal-mounted cameras capable of transmitting video and thermal imaging feeds in real-time. These flying machines can serve as surveillance tools, and even scare away less confident poachers.

Adopting drones can decrease the cost of looking after wildlife animals, and allow the sanctuary staff to conduct wildlife censuses more frequently. Airware claims that using its software, most people can launch autonomous flights on pre-set routes with minimal training.

“The Airware control system is outstanding. It is so easy when something like this works, to take it for granted. This over delivered on my expectations in terms of both simplicity of use and sophistication of capabilities,” said Robert Breare, commercial director of the Ol Pejeta Conservancy.

“It surpassed all of our expectations. We still have more development to do but we’re extremely encouraged and quite proud to be pioneering drones that can preserve some of our planet’s most threatened species,” added Downey.

Last year, the Instant Wild project, run by the Kenya Wildlife Service, Cambridge Consultants and the Zoological Society of London, started deploying tiny satellite-connected cameras in some of the remotest parts of Africa to fight rhino poaching. These devices feature motion sensors connected to a Raspberry Pi, and operate on a single battery.

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