During the summer, the beaches along the Ottawa River are taken over by geese. The biggest problem the geese leave behind is their copious amounts of poop, which carry large amounts of E. Coli bacteria among other pathogens. To combat this problem, the city of Ottawa has brought in the GooseBuster. via modern farmer:
In the past the city of Ottawa has tried a number of different methods of ridding their beaches of these pesky poopers, but after a chance encounter last year, they went high-tech.
Enter the GooseBuster, an aerial-photography drone turned anti-goose-copter. While drones are notoriously used on more violent missions, Steve Wambolt, the founder of Aerial Perspective, takes a more gentle approach.
“I approached my city councilor with a pitch to sell aerial photographs I had been taking with my drone and the first thing he asked was how low can the thing fly,” says Wambolt, a former military man turned high-tech entrepreneur. “At first I was surprised, I wondered if he even listened to my presentation, then he asked if I’d be able to scare geese with it because they had a major goose-poop problem around Petrie Island, I said sure, I could do that.”
Wambolt modified his photography drone with some flashing lights and speakers and took to the skies.
Welcome to drone day on the Adafruit blog. Every Monday we deliver the latest news, products and more from the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), quadcopter and drone communities. Drones can be used for video & photography (dronies), civil applications, policing, farming, firefighting, military and non-military security work, such as surveillance of pipelines. Previous posts can be found via the #drone tag and our drone / UAV categories.