WILD dogs are a hot topic among pastoralists, according to Mayne Jenour, Jingemarra station, Yalgoo.
Mr Jenour spoke at the Pastoralists and Graziers Association of WA (PGA) State Pastoral Forum in Perth last week, with drone development project colleague Nigel Brown, Autonomous Technology.
"As soon as dog numbers start going down and sheep numbers start going up people will have more confidence to invest back into that industry - which brings along all the secondary type businesses," Mr Jenour said.
"There's also a social benefit.
"One thing I did find from not coming from a pastoral region was when you catch up with your friends from the southern ag regions you tend to talk about the price of sheep and cattle or how your crops are growing, how much rain you had and when you had a break.
"But every time you go up on to a station the first thing they talk about is 'have you got any dogs?', 'how are the dogs going?', 'what's happening with the dogs?'
"It's right in the forefront of everyone's mind."
Mr Jenour said he was "new to the pastoral industry" after purchasing the station in 2017.
"I'm on a fairly steep learning curve," he said.
After his first session of baiting wild dogs he realised that there might be a better way to achieve a greater result, which led him to Mr Brown, a former helicopter pilot who has been working on drone technology with defence applications and also for the mining industry.
The two men have been working on developing drone technology to assist pastoralists in managing the scourge of wild dogs on large scale properties in hard to reach locations, which the current small rotor type drone systems are not able to achieve.
"Someone doing some wild dog research stated to us that drones will be useless because dogs never look up," Mr Brown said.
"We proved them completely wrong.
"At about 30 metres in altitude they definitely notice the drone."
Part of the project has been using different camera technology, including infra-red at night to identify dogs and gather data on where they were tracking.
Mr Jenour said the current drones available had a 15 minute flying time which was woefully inadequate for the industry and they were hoping to develop a large drone with a hybrid engine that could operate autonomously for six hours, carrying a payload of 20 kilograms in order to drop baits in hard to reach locations where they have identified dog movements.
He said they would have systems that allowed them to fly as high as possible but gather as much data as they could, which could be fed back to the base station and uploaded on already existing feral animal apps for others to use.
"Nigel has designed, developed and built that (the prototype)," he said.
"What we really want to do is get a database of behavioural traits of the dogs - their den locations, watering points, frequented areas in common and moving corridors, so we can have a bit more of a targeted approach to dog control.
"Potentially the doggers could be going in one area where there are no dogs, whereas they may be able to spend their time in areas where there is a high concentration of dogs."
Mr Jenour said the project was funded with help from the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development's wild dog action plan R&D grant of $140,000 and they were working with the University of New England which "has some good software which is currently land based and they are keen for us to get it up in the air and see how it performs".
Mr Brown said he founded Autonomous Technology 12 years ago to specialise in the mining surveying market but had since been working on defence projects.
"I've been flying helicopters for 22 years so we really saw the strength of the helicopter system for large scale aerial mapping because of its stability in bad weather conditions," Mr Brown said.
"It has a really high payload to weight capacity and one good thing over here, eagles don't like to destroy them.
"Typically the drone category has been swamped under multi rotors (four engine systems) - they have really poor endurance capacity and the faster you fly the more drag you are making and the more power you are consuming.
"With a helicopter you get transitional lift when it starts flying forward and it becomes really efficient like an aeroplane.
"We have put a lot of development around the helicopter system and it's perfect for large scale aerial mapping.
"We've conducted some of Australia's largest mapping for BHP and mineral resources some 20 square kilometres down to 20 millimetres accuracy for survey grade quality."
Mr Brown said since the project was funded they had been developing a main carousel system that was modular and goes under the new helicopter platform, which was slightly bigger (than the one on display).
"It can lift multiple baits - so not only can we go out there and feature recognition and profile where the dogs are moving with imaging cameras - the whole scope is that we can go out and find out where they are actually moving, where the high density traffic is and then at the same time dispense baits in those key areas for intervention," Mr Brown said.
"We don't want to be in a situation where we are just going out there and looking for them and can't do anything, we want to be able to have some form of intervention in those areas."
He said in the greater scope of the project other applications could eventually be incorporated - such as used in the defence industry.
"We are at 1.5 hour endurance at the moment but the next system on the design table we are looking at four to six hours' worth of endurance with 20kg of payload," he said.
He said the NBN had helped on the station, enabling them to get "live HD video feed through a lot of that area".
"We are doing our own localised network that we can daisy chain up our data coms and actually create our own Wi-Fi mesh in smaller facilities and the drone can then relay that back to the homestead from multiple sites," Mr Brown said.
"At the moment with one base station we are at a maximum range of 20km for live HD video feed, which is perfectly suited for how the station is broken up into paddocks.
"We can go paddock to paddock and target each of the areas and get good detailed data on what's there dog-wise."
Mr Jenour said once they had the information they could share it with other pastoralists and licenced pest management technicians.
"With something like Feral Scan and Wild Dog Alert, any information that the drone catches in real time or in stored data can then be sent straight through to these people either in SMS or email - so it's an instant transfer of data," Mr Jenour said.
They said the system also allowed for other applications, including smart tags for identifying lost stock.
It could also be used for "checking mills, doing trap runs and also has a 3D system so it could be working out your drainage - whether there is any erosion if you are in a high rainfall event".
"In terms of biosecurity - everyone has the same problem of people coming onto your property and you don't know they are there - the machine can video and photograph anyone that shouldn't be there," Mr Jenour said.
He said more people were venturing into the remote pastoral areas for prospecting or looking at wild flowers and getting lost "and people are dying up there as well".
"So we could potentially fly a drone in there with a note and say you have been found, here's a rug, here's some dinner and a couple of Coronas and we'll be down in the morning and pick you up," he said.
