In February, DroneUA together with the Aerospace Research Center represented Ukraine at the annual congress of participants in the international scientific project OPTIMISE in Dubrovnik, Howarthia.
The OPTIMISE (Innovative optical tools for proximal sensing of ecophysiological processes) project is aimed at creating new unmanned platforms, sensors and data processing methods for remote monitoring of plant ecosystems. Such monitoring provides scientific and practical information not only about the vegetation itself, but also about the processes of gas exchange between the Earth and the atmosphere. UAV monitoring can also be used to validate data from new satellite missions such as Sentinel.
The project places particular emphasis on compact multispectral sensors capable of obtaining high-resolution data in spectral channels that are inaccessible to conventional cameras. Scientific experts from 44 countries, including Ukraine, are participating in the OPTIMISE project.
At the congress, DroneUA presented the results of monitoring agricultural crops using its own sensors that record signals in the visible and near-infrared spectrum. In Ukraine, as in many other countries, agricultural land makes up the majority of the land cover and significantly influences gas and heat exchange. Therefore, agricultural monitoring is not only of industrial interest, but also important for environmental and climate research.
The results of the practical use of cameras developed at DroneUA have shown that the resulting data is in good agreement with multispectral satellite measurements, and also allows one to accurately determine biological indicators of vegetation from a height of several hundred meters. Thus, the camera is not just a device for acquiring images, but a tool for quantitative remote monitoring. In combination with a long-flying aircraft platform, it allows you to obtain high-resolution multispectral data from 400-500 hectares of surface in less than two hours.
