We're doomed. Doomed!

Interesting video on Ireland and climate change here. There is a free two-day event in Maynooth coming up on the 22 and 23 June. Mary Robinson is one of the keynote speakers.

Go here to book your place.

http://www.trocaire.org/climate-justice-2015

Unmanned Aircraft Association of Ireland

I better do this update before new news becomes old news. We hosted the inaugural meeting of the Unmanned Aircraft Association of Ireland (UAAI) at the NCG in early April. This is a group of like-minded professionals whose aim is to promote the safe and successful integration of unmanned aircraft into Irish airspace and helping to establish the technology within Ireland. Surveyors, engineers, legal professionals, regulations reps, videographers, equipment suppliers, they were all there. The NCG's own Dr. Tim McCarthy was elected head of the working group on technology and I will be working with him on that. If you are wondering why I am not in the photo it is because I was the one taking it!

UAAI Council

Chairman: Julie Garland

Secretary/Treasurer: Enda Nolan

Directors

Outreach: Steve Flynn

Public Relations: Fearghus Foyle

Operations: Gearóid O' Briain

Data Privacy: John Wright

Technology: Tim McCarthy

Victory

It's great when business and pleasure collide - I have a big interest in history, always did - particularly old sailing ships. So I was very impressed last week to see this high density laser scan of the Victory in Portsmouth. I have been over to see it - it is well worth a visit. 90 billion points...

Fenit Oil Spill Exercise

Just back this week from the oil spill exercise in Fenit in Co. Kerry. This was related to last years 'Exercise Cathach'  and the weather conditions were quite similar! High winds, heavy showers - ideal weather for UAVS....I also finally found someone to explain why it had been called Cathach (which means sea monster) but I have now forgotten the reason. Oh well...

Still, like Cathach the Falcon was able to fly (thanks to Ronán Ó Braonáin - our resident Falcon top-gun) and some video footage was captured along the shoreline in the area we were tasked to monitor. We also rolled in some Braemor training so it was a busy few days.

This year we were testing two apps in development for controlling and directing ground teams. 

- The first is new. The central control team were based in a hotel in Tralee and were watching our movements real-time on a map of the area. They could send us tasks and direct us to areas for samples, photos, etc. We could relay those back to them in near-real time - depending on phone signal. A few bugs to be worked out but it worked very well overall. Rain, cold fingers and smart phone screens do not go well together, however.

- The second app is the older ubipix App - I've been using this for a few projects for quite some time, it allows us to take spatial video and upload that. The first app could task us to the location and tell us what video was needed, the second app allowed us to take it and upload it - the guys in the hotel monitored and controlled the overall area. Here is an example of a Ubipix video from the day.

The highlights of the trip were undoubtedly the lovely Kerry scenery, the stray dog that got in the way of every demonstration on the beach and that no-one could catch and the elderly couple who stopped us to see if we could spot dog dirt with our UAV and then asked for lengthy IT advice when they found out one of us was a computer scientist. Needless to say I abandoned said CS to his fate and enjoyed some more of the Kerry scenery from a few metres away.