Amphibious drones are being
developed to collect and test potentially dangerous water samples from
difficult to access watercourses.
Dan Squire founded Drones Over
Water last year in South Australia and has developed a sensor unit,
which attaches to amphibious drones to allow the collection of samples
from watercourses. He said the drones were highly efficient and could be
used for collecting and testing samples from reservoirs, chemical
spills, wastewater plants, tailings dams and ocean oil spills. The
drones are capable of flying to a programmed GPS position, collecting a
sample from a specific depth, testing the sample onboard and sending the
data remotely.
Squire will travel from Adelaide to the United States
in April with a group from Flinders University’s New Venture Institute
to speak with potential investors or business partners. "I’m on the cusp of a couple of trials … the prototype’s pretty much finished," he said. "Then
we’ll have a product that will be at the point where we’ve trialed our
technology and we’ll be looking for investment … so we can go out to the
market and start providing the service to people by operating our own
equipment or selling the equipment itself."
The global drones market is expected to reach USD 5.59 billion by 2020, at an estimated compound annual growth rate of 32.22% between 2015 and 2020...
|
|
