In May, the US National Park Service, Giant Sequoia Lands Coalition and other groups coordinated a first-of-its-kind health check-up for Sequoia National park's General Sherman, the world's largest known living tree.
A drone used in the inspection was Freefly's Astro Prime, a new NDAA-compliant and Blue UAS-approved version of its workhorse commercial UAS platform. The drone used various swappable payloads, including a Lidar scanner and HD video camera, to quickly and safely examine all 275 feet of the ancient sequoia, which is more than 2,200 years old.
The Astro Prime calls on Doodle Labs mesh rider radios to establish a resilient datalink, maintain connectivity and full control of the drone in an off-grid environment and reliably send high-bandwidth data back to the ground.
