Six months ago I spent two and a half weeks in Mongolia with the Denver Zoo trying to capture Cinereous Vultures for research into their migration patterns. Our method was a little unorthodox in that we developed a remote-control quadcopter (image at the bottom of this page) to release a net over the nest, allowing, in principle, the zoo researchers enough time to approach the nest and tag the bird. While the project didn’t quite work as well as envisioned, it did spur a strong interest in unmanned aerial vehicles and drones and developed into the business I’ve been helping launch.

Agribotix employs fixed wing autonomous drones to snap aerial images of agricultural land which can be used to minimize pesticide, herbicide, fertilizer, and water use. The website I built just launched so check it out here. The Penguin drone took a series of images of the Boulder Model Airport environs and the combined, orthorectified image is shown below.