Regular testing of waterways and reservoirs is a never-ending job for utilities and municipal safety authorities, and the traditional method is manual sampling, which requires a boat or at least a pair of tall, waterproof rubber boots. The cost of 8-10 samples at a site is about 100 US dollars, but using drones instead of manual sampling costs about 20 US dollars for a site. The cost of drone sampling is cheaper and safer. Rivers, reservoirs, lakes must be sampled every two months, so do you know how many reservoirs, lakes or rivers there are in a country? Therefore, a new way to make money was born from drones.
The drone sample collector consists of a winch with a rope plus a container bottle, allowing the drone to fly out, and then submerging the collector in water. A camera is integrated on the collector to clearly see the sampled images. There is a sampling depth setting on the APP, which can be sampled at different depths as needed.
This allows for quick sampling at multiple locations – the drone’s battery can last about 40 minutes, and depending on the weather and distance, about 10 samples can be taken per sortie, and one sortie from one location can complete the mission.
The drone approach to water flow sampling has the added benefit of having a precise GPS location for each sample, and some companies are currently working on a smarter version of the sampler that includes a suite of sensors that can perform field measurements on all the most common factors. Tests: temperature, pH, organisms, various chemicals. By skipping the step of bringing the water back to the lab for testing, the results of the water sample monitoring are available directly in the field, greatly simplifying the process.
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