Flying robots help researchers identify and protect threatened plants and other species in places that are inaccessible to humans
On a knife-edge ridge on Kauai, a delicate little plant with a tuft of yellow flowers sprouts from the rock. The only sounds are the wind, the murmur of waves far below—and the hum of drone propellers. The whine gets louder as another drone suspended from the first encloses the plant with two arms, a blade slicing through the stem. The device then gently lifts the plant, a member of the genus Schiedea, part of the carnation family.
The study, published recently in Nature Scientific Reports, builds on decades of botanical investigations on Kauai, which has more than 250 native plant species. Historically, botanists have rappelled down the island’s sheer rock faces to reach specific plants, going to extremes for samples that they can raise in a nursery to perpetuate species at risk of extinction.
The Mamba’s sampling components include a foam-padded grasping arm that can move like a wrist, and a hook that draws a plant’s stem toward a blade. The team is now considering how to equip the Mamba with other tools, such as a vacuum that could suck in plant material or a nozzle that could spray a slurry of seeds and growing medium onto a cliffside for replanting.
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