Announcement

The Year in Drone 2024

2024 was a big year for the Drone Lab. It was the first full year of being a UI Service Center, and the number of flights and drones active in the lab reached new highs. In total, we flew almost 100 missions, almost 50 miles, and no significant incidents! Keep reading below for more highlights from the lab this year.

Notable Projects & Developments

  • In May 2024, we (finally) received our lidar drone, consisting of a Freefly Astro and the Yellowscan Surveyor Ultra 3. We flew over 40 lidar missions in 2024!
  • We collected data to support a new dormant-season grazing project on the Curlew National Grasslands, and for existing work on riparian restoration at UI’s Rinker Rock Creek Ranch.
  • We continued to train students in drone operations and high-accuracy mapping through monthly flights and volume estimates of woodchip piles for Westrock-Smurfit’s yard at the Port of Wilma, Washington.
  • We flew to collect imagery and lidar data for multiple student projects on the UI Experimental Forest and the UI Arboretum.
  • In November, AgWest Farm Credit announced a donation of $75,000 to the Drone Lab to support the purchase of a US-made agricultural spray and seeding drone. We are over the moon about this donation and what it will enable us to accomplish in 2025.
  • In December, Idaho Forest Group donated one of their WingtraOne drones to the Drone Lab to provide students with opportunities to learn how to fly VTOL drones.
  • In fall 2024, we brough on JB Playfair as the manager of the Drone Lab to help us with the anticipated growth of the lab in 2025.

Stereo Photo Cards

Stereo photo pairs are overlapping photos that can be viewed in 3D with a simple stereo viewer (you can also train yourself to see them in 3D without the viewer!). For as long as I can remember, I’ve been enamored with the old-fashioned stereo cards that fit in a Holmes Stereoscope. For this year, I thought it would be fun to pick some cool photos from drone mapping missions we flew in 2024 and make our own old-fashioned stereo cards for them. These can be printed in full size and used with a stereoscope. Enjoy!