Uncrewed Systems Technology 043 l Auve Tech Iseauto taxi l Charging focus l Advanced Navigation Hydrus l UGVs insight l MVVS 116 l Windracers ULTRA l CES 2022 show report l ECUs focus I Distant Imagery

112 although far less laborious for human workers (and invasive for ecosystems) than conventional on-foot replanting. Glavan comments, “You’re looking to plant around 2000 seeds per flight every 8-10 minutes, so you need a lot of people on hand to reload seeds or seed balls into the payload tanks, and then install them on a UAV that’s just had a fresh battery swapped in. That doesn’t include the pre-checks and then monitoring the craft via the GCS and direct line of sight as it flies over these sensitive environments or picking and germinating seeds and making seed balls where required.” The more seeds that need to be planted, the more workers or volunteers have to be called on to walk through biomes for hand planting (whether seed or sapling). UAVs thus pose a far more logistically efficient alternative that could boost the number of successful reforestation projects worldwide. “Working with UAVs is sometimes challenging for non-drone people, because there are so many models, and UAV sales engineers often overcomplicate the explanation of how they work, how to use them and their payloads – and the payloads can cost crazy sums or they simply do not exist on a commercial scale,” Rhodes says. “That’s why initially we’ve custom-built so much from the ground up, so we spent less time, resources and thought on matching an existing, set-in-stone and possibly generic solution to our unique problem. Building our own drone also cut the cost nearly in half. “UAVs also give you the ability to reforest protected ecological zones, where people aren’t allowed, or places that are difficult to access owing to distance or forest density. “Many zones have such restrictions, and even if they don’t, it’s a good idea not to have hundreds of workers stomping through forests and potentially damaging existing flora in their efforts to try to create more. They could instead take it in shifts, working as teams of operators and maintenance technicians, or studying the environment, which is important since we had to compensate for tides that were, at times, massively different from what existing charts said would happen.” He suggests that UAVs can be used in sensitive areas while manual planting is carried out in non-sensitive zones, or simply to help increase coverage while manual sapling planting is also being conducted. Distant Imagery’s systems and methodologies will be complementary to traditional planting in developing countries and will not remove locals from the process. Restoration analysis Once the 50,000 seeds were distributed across the lagoon in Abu Dhabi, the post- mission analysis began. The process April/May 2022 | Unmanned Systems Technology As the UAVs fly, other team members will perform tasks such as preparing the next rounds of seeds or battery packs The company plans in future to train and equip reforestation companies in developing countries around the world to use its aerial replanting systems