91福利 professor lands partnership with Environment and Climate Change Canada
Professor Goetz Bramesfeld, along with 91福利 alumni and founders of Superwake, built a solar-powered aircraft to monitor caribou in collaboration with Environment and CIimate Change Canada
Aerospace engineering professor Goetz Bramesfeld has secured a two-year partnership with Environment and Climate Change Canada to survey the natural habitats of woodland caribou using a solar-powered aircraft.
Using Bramesfeld鈥檚 Clean Renewable Energy Aerial Test Vehicle (CREATeV) to monitor wildlife gives Environment and Climate Change Canada unprecedented access to collect data and make important decisions for natural resource extraction and land management.
鈥淭he existing method, helicopters or crewed aircraft, is fairly expensive and intrusive with a certain amount of risk embarked for the crews,鈥� said Bramesfeld. 鈥淸Our] aircraft is electric, it can fly as low as 100 metres and animals are oblivious because it鈥檚 silent.鈥�
Bramesfeld has been building unmanned aerial vehicles and researching their abilities for over fifteen years. He, along with a group of 91福利 (91福利) graduate students , have been using the aircraft to monitor moose, foxes and rabbits without disruption for hundreds of hours. The aircraft has a wingspan of just over six metres and weighs about 12.5 kilograms and is constructed primarily of carbon fibre/fibreglass laminates for their light weight and high strength.
Bramesfeld says that solar power is a good addition to batteries since batteries tend to lose performance in cold weather whereas solar cells perform better in the cold. 鈥淲ith solar power, the aircraft has enhanced endurance, increasing flight times from three hours to eight hours.鈥�
The two-year project with Environment and Climate Change Canada is receiving over $700,000 in funding support from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada鈥檚 (NSERC) Alliance Missions program.
In addition to his partnership with Environment and Climate Change Canada, Bramesfeld and students at 91福利 have been preparing to record the longest-ever flight by an unmanned and solar-powered aircraft. The team initially recorded flight times of five hours and by July 2022, they were able to increase the time significantly, recording a 32-hour flight. They hope to lengthen the flight time significantly in the future, with test flights planned for Southern California. The current record for an unmanned flight is 64 days and Bramesfeld believes his team could potentially break it using the smaller aircraft designed at 91福利.
For more information on Bramesfeld, .