Drones deployed in Maldives to track plastic pollution

Headed by Melissa Schiele, a PhD researcher in Loughborough University’s School of Mechanical, Electrical, and Manufacturing Engineering, the aim of the project is to develop simple methods using drones to gather images of ocean and beach plastics. Schiele said these will be used to build a baseline database of aggregation, deposition rates and classification.

The project is being undertaken in collaboration with Oceans Unmanned, the Marine Research and High Education Center (MaRHE – University of Milano-Bicocca), and supported by The Ritz-Carlton Maldives, Fari Islands.

The Maldives project follows similar work undertaken by Schiele in Belize that explored the use of a novel fixed-wing UAV as an enforcement and monitoring tool in the Turneffe Marine Atoll.

Common to both projects is the Aeromapper Talon fixed-wing UAV. The system being used in the Maldives was donated by the non-profit organization Oceans Unmanned and features a Sony RX0 camera controlled via ArduPilot’s Mission Planner software.

“Although this system is ultimately the same as the one in Belize - though it no longer has a live-link nose camera - the system I am developing for my PhD independently addresses key requirements from the system, for example, flying beyond 10km range,” said Schiele.