Environmental Protection: Power Line Bird-Diverter Installation with Novel Touch-Capable Drone

Our water air soil farms and forests depend on birds as vital natural resources. Birds consumeinsects pollinate plants disperse seeds and maintain wetlands. Unfortunately transmission linecollisions kill 57 million birds annually in the United States. Installing markers that help birdssee and not hit power lines can decrease bird collisions by more than 70%. Today powerlinemen use bucket trucks and helicopters to install these lightweight devices on live electricalcables. However the extreme risk and substantial cost required to install these reflectors limitwidespread adoption.Pitch Aeronautics has built a drone designed for up-close inspections that leverages a cyclorotor for precision lateral positioning and wind tolerance and a unique configuration for placing 5-25lb payloads next to structures. This SBIR phase I research will develop a novel flight controlmethod to allow this drone to perform touch-based installations of bird diverters throughsystematic computer modeling sub-component experiments and flight testing. It will also create a new state estimation algorithm that fuses several electromagnetic field and other sensors tolocalize the drone relative to an energized power line. This state estimation system will be tunedand evaluated via laboratory experiments. Phase I research will culminate in using the drone toinstall a bird diverter on a de-energized cable and laboratory proof-of-concept of the sensorsystem. Phase II development will combine these technologies to demonstrate bird diverterinstallation on an energized power line commercially. Ultimately Pitch Aeronautics cansubstantially lower bird casualties with this bird diverter installation drone.