Rapid Water Quality Tests from New Drone

Amphibious Pelican Drone from The Netherlands

Source:  TU Delft, Pelican Drone in Action This Week

Water Testing in Minutes

The Pelican amphibious drone is able to deliver water tests in minutes.  This new technology is gamechanging because current water quality testing is time and labor intensive, requires on site visits by humans and then the water samples have to be transported to a lab. The traditional process is expensive and many times the water samples no longer accurately reflect current water conditions, which dynamically change. The Pelican drone provides water quality testing results in real-time.

Autonomous and Real Time Water Monitoring

A team at Delft University of Technology in The Netherlands has invented the Pelican drone that flies over the water surface and scans it for problem areas with its onboard hyperspectral cameras.  If there's a potential problem, the drone swoops down and takes a water sample.  The sample is transferred to a portable cytasense flow cytometer, which is a water testing measuring instrument.  The results are given in minutes.

Pelican Drone Diver

The Pelican drone is much faster and more efficient than traditional methods of checking for water quality issues like blue-green algae. It's able to monitor water quality autonomously and in real-time.  The TU Delft researchers are developing the drone to not only land on the water surface but to dive underwater automatically. The companion measuring instrument is capable of scanning and analyzing tens of thousands of microorganisms and photographing thousands in a few minutes.  This very quick process revolutionizes monitoring water quality and prevents deterioration of water testing samples for much more accurate reads.