The spiderlike machine carries a point-and-shoot camera aimed at the ground as it travels along a preprogrammed path defined by GPS coordinates. But Dandois and fellow researchers are trying to do more than just get a bird’s-eye view of the treetops.
Dandois is working on Ecosynth, a suite of tools his team is developing with National Science Foundation funding. Their goal is to allow anyone from a professional ecologist to a citizen scientist to generate an interactive, three-dimensional map of any landscape. He says that a confluence of ever-cheaper drones — Dandois prefers the less ominous term autocopters — with more accessible and user-friendly 3-D mapping and visualization software has made this project possible.
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