Wired.com - The Navy and the U.S. Department of Agriculture are teaming up to evaluate 35,000 acres of biofuel plants on Maui. The project will be utilizing a tiny robotic helicopter in the monitoring process.
The acreage planted with several biofuel plants owned by Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar will be closely watched by the robo-copter. Changes such as temperature fluctuations and budding will be noted and recorded as part of the evaluation process.
The total cost of the five-year project is $10 million.
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The Navy and the U.S. Department of Agriculture are teaming up to evaluate 35,000 acres of biofuel plants on Maui, utilizing a tiny robotic helicopter in the monitoring process. Photo: Leptron
The experiment is part of the Navy's plans to cut fuel consumption in half by 2020. This comes in the wake of its biggest purchase of biofuels ever-450,000 gallons for $12 million. The purchase was made to power an aircraft carrier an upcoming demonstration voyage this summer.
