ON FARM NORTHERN CATTLE TECHNOLOGYz An opportunity for remote enterprises to soar Owen said the project’s challenges are working within the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) regulatory framework and ensuring the project delivers value. “We work closely with CASA to ensure we satisfy the legal requirements, such as operating within line of sight or having the appropriate permit/licence for flights that are not,” he said. “We’re developing a complete business case, a tool and applications that deliver important but often hard-to-source information that can have an enormous impact on business outputs.” In the future, Hitachi Consulting and MLA hopes to further advance the Eagles Nest platform by developing remote re-charging capabilities, solar operations and remote data retrieval. G Owen Keates rowing beef in some “Eagles Nest, which has superior E: owen.keates@ of Australia’s most imaging capabilities compared to hitachiconsulting.com remote locations will be satellite, can assess biomass (pasture) no barrier to adopting down to type and calculate dry carbonix.com.au the latest in autonomous farming matter per hectare, which will help solutions, according to Owen producers make decisions as well as highlight and geo-tag locations of RESEARCH IN Keates of Hitachi Consulting. livestock, invasive pests and weeds,” REVIEW Together with MLA Donor Company and Owen said. Sydney-based manufacturer Carbonix, “It can also monitor water supplies and PROJECT AIM Hitachi Consulting is developing infrastructure such as fencing.” To develop drone technology that ‘Eagles Nest’, a drone platform capable will return valuable data to inform ofpasture measuring, mapping and Owen said producers in areas with business decision making tools for infrastructure monitoring poor communications shouldn’t extensive beef enterprises. . Owen (pictured) said inspiration for the feel excluded. RESEARCH ORGANISATIONS projecte done trial wo“We’vcame froma close shave with a rk at Croydon MLA Donor Company and Hitachi wedge-tailed eagle Station where there is no mobile signal Consulting . and used satellite communications “It flew across the front of our LandCruiserto collect data from remote sensors,” FUNDING on the way back from Croydon Station he said. $1.2 million in central Queensland and it prompted MLA’s Dr Nigel Tomkins and I to wonder “At Calliope Station in central DURATION what we could do with UAV (unmanned Queensland, we’ve shown remoteness 2017–2019 aerial vehicle) technology with the is no barrier to adoption, connecting KEY FINDINGS TO DATE same extent of autonomy, to help those water level sensors across the property An autonomous fixed-wing, hybrid extensive properties,” he said. with LoRa communication systems,” unmanned aerial vehicle has been Results have been romising so far. Thep he said. developed as a proof-of-concept. proof-of-concept project has developed Hitachi Consulting is developing It is capable of vertical take-off and a fixed-wing hybrid drone, capable of decision support software to help landing and will fly up to 150km and vertical take-off and landing that will flyproducers apply the pasture-type remain in the air for up to two hours. up to 150km and remain in the air for up and density information collected by to two hours. Eagles Nest. 36