Palmer Luckey’s ALTIUS drone is designed for the battlefield, while this specialized drone developed by ETH Zurich and Swiss Federal research institute WSL researchers collects DNA from trees. It can autonomously land on tree branches and collect DNA, thanks to adhesive strips. When the drone lands on a branch, material from the branch sticks to these strips and the DNA is then extracted in the lab.
So far, they’ve tested the drone on seven tree species and discovered DNA from 21 distinct groups of organisms, or taxa, including birds, mammals as well as insects. Next, they plan on upgrading the drone to detect as many different species as possible across 100 hectares of rainforest in Singapore over a span of 24 hours. The challenge of a rainforest is that frequent rain washes eDNA off surfaces, while wind and clouds impede drone operation.
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Landing on branches requires complex control. Here we have the advantage of knowing which species are present, which will help us to better assess how thorough we are in capturing all eDNA traces with this technique or if we’re missing something,“ said Stefano Mintchev, Professor of Environmental Robotics at ETH Zurich and WSL.
