A Geoengineer’s Christmas List 2010


My own personal Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)!

The SenseFly swinglet CAM UAV has a 12 mega-pixel camera mounted on a lightweight aerial frame that requires no piloting skills.  You connect the ground station to your laptop via USB and provide waypoints for the vehicle to fly, taking pictures at designated intervals.  It can land on its own, and you can provide updated instructions on the fly.  If it loses contact for some reason, it will just orbit on the flight path.  In the absolute worst case, it circle down and land at its slowest speed.  The package runs about $10,000 (US) according to the Google Earth Blog.  But it includes everything you need to fly minus the laptop.

Thanks for the hook up Santa!