A crowd gathered at Auburn University’s hayfield this morning to watch as Congressman Mike Rogers tried his hand at flying one of the school’s newest drones.
Auburn University recently received approval from the Federal Aviation Administration to operate an Unmanned Aircraft Systems Flight School as part of its Aviation Center.
Students and faculty from the bio systems engineering, aviation and agriculture departments demonstrated fixed-wing and rotary-winged unmanned aircrafts.
Auburn University Regional Airport Director Bill Hutto said the research and training done through the new flight school will be applicable to agriculture, engineering and even journalism.
“The applications for precision agriculture- we look at building science and the inspections that can be done, even something as simple as a roof inspection,” Hutto said. “We want to be able to train not only our students, but the faculty and general public in the proper use of these.”
Each of the drones demonstrated were attached to a small camera and were able to cover about “200 acres in about 20 minutes” according to Hutto. The eBee Sensefly drone allows for the pilot to see which parts of a crop need watering and how to adjust irrigation systems.
Department Head Director of the bioenergy and bio products center Steve Taylor said the real advantages are the ease with which the drones are able to process images and handle the data quickly.
“We don’t have to wait several days for a satellite to come over or the right airplane to come to our field,” Taylor said. “We can fly this morning and process the image, and the image of the data is really what’s important.”
Flying the drone seemed to come easily to Congressman Rogers.
“It was really just dumb luck,” Rogers said. “I’m sure it would take 30 minutes or so and you would be able to handle those pretty well.”
Auburn’s aviation school currently has four drones, and the bio systems engineering department has a few that are used for research.
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