On 23 October, Rijkswaterstaat's 'Drones in Water Management' event saw the kick-off and signing of a new project by TU Delft's Micro Air Vehicle Lab. Together with Rijkswaterstaat, companies and other authorities, MAVLab researchers and students will develop a Pelican drone that can be used to detect blue-green algae in water, among other things. The Pelican drone was also awarded a 'Drone Oscar' for the most innovative drone solution for water management by Johan Jacobs, director of Innovation at the Ministry of I&W.
Pelican drone
Kevin van Hecke of the MaVLab: "The Pelican drone is a project in which we combine two new technologies to improve water quality management: drones and flow-cytometry. With a flow-cytometer (in this case from the company CytoBuoy), you can see exactly and quickly what's in the water, but to do that you need to be able to quickly collect and deliver fresh water samples. We will do the latter with a drone.
By equipping the drone with a multispectral remote sensing camera, it can smartly and innovatively choose interesting locations to take the test samples. It then looks at exactly what is in the samples with the CytoSense, which can automatically determine what particles are in the water. This will enable rapid plankton analysis in the future and automatic monitoring for blue-green algae, for example. Our plan is to eventually take underwater samples with the drone as well. That is why we have called this the Pelican drone."
MAVLab is collaborating in this project with RWS/WVL (client phase 1 is Aad van den Burg), companies, such as Cytobuoy, and other authorities. A floating drone will be developed in 2018, and work on a diving drone will start in 2019.
Source: TU Delft.
