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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Using drones deployed in the air and GoPros underwater, Oregon State University marine ecologist Leigh Torres recently completed her fourth field season documenting previously unseen behaviors of gray whales—and gathering their poop—off the Oregon coast.
Torres and her team use a 17-foot inflatable boat to track gray whales right off the shoreline, around Newport, Ore. Once they see a whale, they drop a GoPro underwater to see what the whale is eating and deploy the drone overhead to watch behaviors and gather data about the size of the whales to understand more about their health.
And, if they are lucky, the researchers spot and gather poop, which further helps them understand whales' health and biology.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 21 2019, @01:43PM (3 children)
Researchers have resorted to using children’s toys to do their research. Clearly their budgets aren’t big enough. Or maybe they just blew their entire research budget on fancy wine, expensive cheese, and plane tickets to invite their colleagues to the lab.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ElizabethGreene on Thursday November 21 2019, @02:50PM (1 child)
A multirotor capable of prolonged flight beyond the line of site of the operator is not a child's toy. It's easy to drop a couple of grand in that space for an "ok" piece of kit. If you aren't building it from parts you can easily double that.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday November 21 2019, @08:14PM
Weirdly there seem to be a number of people who browse this site who have an anti-science worldview.
Well, anti-science that doesn't support their worldview anyway. Those sorts of petty attacks are just part of the nonsense.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by richtopia on Thursday November 21 2019, @04:02PM
More accurately: miniaturization and economies of scale have made professional equipment priced on-par with children's toys. Drones and GoPros are regularly used by professionals in many industries. If a camera is good enough for a professional film crew, it is probably good enough for researchers.
Slightly off-topic AC: how much do you spend on children's toys? This equipment is affordable, but I wouldn't call these children's toys per-se. The new GoPro is $400, and the DJI drones capable of 4K footage is around $800.