Mountain Drone Team goes above and beyond to analyze glaciers
The Ohio State University Mountain Drone Team (MDT), which includes eight Buckeye engineers, is engineering the first custom-built, unmanned aerial systems (UAS) capable of 3D laser-mapping in high-mountain environments.
The team will play a vital role in how Ohio State researchers measure and analyze glacial changes. Their fully autonomous drone enables them to go higher and see more than ever—revealing information about the driving forces of accumulation, surface displacement, slope deformation and climate control on topography. This data will help scientists predict how glacial changes will impact the environment and the people who rely on them.
After a test-run in Nevada last summer, the team is preparing to take their device to Peru later this year to begin mapping crucial glaciers.
Launched in 2017 as part of Geography Professor Bryan Mark’s Glacier Environmental Change research group, the team of nine consists of graduate and undergraduate students who have or are pursuing science and engineering degrees. Participating students have the opportunity to investigate how climate change impacts public health and discover new ways to evaluate these impacts.
“I was drawn to the MDT because we are applying engineering and technological advances to address real-world problems. Working with the team has allowed me hands-on experience with bleeding-edge drone and remote sensing technologies,” said Evan Vega, a civil, environmental and geodetic engineering major.
Melting glaciers in Peru’s Cordillera Blanca mountain range provide water to surrounding populations for hydropower, irrigation and drinking. However, they also pose serious risks for nearby towns from flooding, avalanches and landslides.
“There is a pressing need for more highly accurate, cross-scale, on-demand, spatially distributed data to inform scientific understanding and adaptive risk management strategies,” said Mountain Drone Team Lead Forrest Schoessow, a PhD student in geography. “We are leveraging [Ohio State technology] and scientific advances in an effort to transform the way geographers and earth scientists view our planet’s changing mountain systems.”
Off-the-shelf UAS are not made to fly at the altitudes the RANGER has been designed to, nor do they come equipped with remote sensing units or power supplies needed to achieve the team’s desired flight times and mapping capabilities.
“A combination between laser-mapping and photogrammetry is what makes our platform unique,” Schoessow said. “Typical surveys use one of these sensors, while the RANGER is capable of interchanging sensor packages to achieve accurate and dense measurement of surface geometry.”
The team is stationed in the Glacier Environmental Change (GEC) Laboratory at the Ohio State Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center, where scientists study the nature, extent and impact of environmental changes over different time scales, mostly in glacial areas.
The center offers engineers, scientists and students the opportunity to collaborate.
“Personally, my favorite thing about the Mountain Drone Team is getting the opportunity to collaborate with professionals from a variety of backgrounds and problem-solve,” said third-year industrial and systems engineering student Jacob Langermeier. “The networking has definitely helped me to get a foot in the door toward a successful career in engineering.”
A UAS survey workflow was successfully tested by the team on the Lehman rock glacier in the Great Basin National Park last August, where Mark has been monitoring changes for over a decade. Since 2015, aerial surveys of the rock glacier have been conducted using kites and a large balloon rig with a camera stabilizer.
“Moving these balloons around has been super difficult,” Schoessow said. “We’ve had some injuries in the past from the balloons getting caught in the wind and pulling researchers across jagged rocks.”
Before the winter is over, the team hopes to do more field-testing on frozen waterfalls at Hayden Falls in north Columbus as well as in New York and Vermont. This will give them an opportunity to test their instruments, lasers and optical sensors relying solely on solar power before they travel to Peru to collect time-series data.
The Mountain Drone Team is supported by Ohio State’s Department of Geography, Sharpe Innovation Commons, the College of Nursing's Innovation Studio, Tech Hub and the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center. Students interested in sensor integration and autonomous flight in mountain environments can contact Forrest Schoessow at schoessow.1@osu.edu about joining the team.
by Alex Andrews, College of Engineering student communications assistant
