UAVs let Upward Bound students take to the skies

August 10, 2016

Alaska EPSCoR photo by Tom Moran. Modern Blanket Toss students and instructors pilot a custom-built drone on a mapping mission at Chena Hot Springs Resort in May.

On a dirt runway 60 miles outside of Fairbanks, Wally Flynn knelt over a DJI Phantom drone. He checked its gimbals, noted the condition of the propellers and the camera attachment, listened for alert sounds and backed away. At each step, he recited what he had just done, part of a rigorous preflight procedure.

But it was difficult for his group of fellow students to understand a word of it, because Flynn spoke in Yu’pik. A high school senior from the village of Chefornak on the Kuskokwim River delta, Flynn came to Chena Hot Springs as part of The Modern Blanket Toss, a program to bring cutting-edge unmanned aerial vehicle technology to Alaska’s rural high schools.

“The purpose of the project is to expose students to science-related activities that broaden their horizons,” said John Monahan, who heads the UAF Upward Bound program and leads the project. “It’s meant to be something captivating that’s fascinating and interesting to them, and gives them a hook on what a possible future career could be.”

The Modern Blanket Toss is a three-year project of UAF Upward Bound and the Alaska National Science Foundation Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research. Students from five rural high schools learn about UAVs and geographic information systems through after-school activities, receive immersive training in them during a residential summer program at UAF and then use the drones to undertake mapping projects to benefit their communities.

At least, that’s the theory. As Monahan stressed, this is a pilot project, and not everything has gone as planned. He described a three-year process of adapting to the challenges of harsh weather, isolation (three of the five schools are off the road system) and fragile, quickly outdated technology.

“We really didn’t know that much about UAVs three years ago, and part of it was a huge learning curve for us, documenting everything we have discovered along the way,” he said. “Some of the best learning was fixing the equipment and mapping the UAVs, figuring out what was going wrong.”

Even as program emphases and equipment shifted, students used the drones for multiple projects. In 2014 they mapped out the UAF Frisbee golf course, and in 2015 they made similar maps of beaches and recreation areas around Fairbanks. Students in Nikiski and Chefornak worked to map methane pockets in nearby lakes and rivers. Bethel students looked for rotten ice on the Kuskokwim River. Shishmaref students mapped the erosion eating their shoreline. Seward high schoolers made 3-D maps of inaccessible mountain valleys to chart their potential to contribute to flooding.

“The students seem to plug into community service,” Monahan said. “Helping somebody, and having a product they want to show in the end.”

The effort to put the drones to good use brought Flynn and 15 fellow high school students to Chena Hot Springs in May; the owner has grand plans to expand the property and wanted elevation data. In exchange, he hosted the students.

Under wispy cirrus clouds, the students, instructors and technicians hiked above the resort, set up a hexacopter in a clearing amid spindly black spruce trees, ran through the customary checklist and let fly.

Alaska EPSCoR photo by Tom Moran. Modern Blanket Toss students, from left, Bryan Sledge, Brittney Boney, Wally Flynn and Alexia Ayukluk watch as instructor Charlie Parr inspects their DJI Phantom quadcopter during a mapping project on the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus in June 2014.

Manning the controls was Bethel student Danielle Kashatok, who watched intently as the drone elevated hundreds of feet and entered into a preprogrammed mapping routine.

“I want to be a pilot when I grow up,” Kashatok said. “I feel like a pilot when I’m using the controller.”

Behind Kashatok, student Cyrus Kinegak of Chefornak alternated between studying the drone feed on a laptop and scratching Yu’pik words in the dirt. Kinegak said the project fits well with his own goals.

“I would like to follow in my brother’s footsteps. He used to be a pilot,” he said. “One of my dreams is to become a pilot, and using UAVs includes a lot of aviation.”

Back down the hill, Flynn and another set of students flew a DJI Phantom with the loose idea of making a promotional video. Flynn maneuvered the drone between tall aspens and followed on foot, while other students pretended to be tourists, walking past a pony corral and staring into a chicken coop. A few minutes later, edging through some trees near the resort entrance, the Phantom clipped a branch and augered 10 feet straight down into a parking lot. Students and instructors picked it up, inspected it and sent it flying again within minutes.

“It’s amazing how much these things can survive,” noted Adam Low, a curriculum developer with the project.

On the other hand, talking to the students and instructors gives a telling glimpse into the challenges of using UAVs in Alaska. Flynn said plans to map methane bubbles in Chefornak were hampered when they couldn’t find a proper thermal camera. Kinegak said the Bethel project was delayed when a miscommunication about instructions led to the drone crashing into the mud.

Still, as the program draws to a close, Monahan said, it has weathered every storm, both literal and figurative. Students have enjoyed the experience, evaluators have given it strong marks and leaders are working on a proposal to expand the program.

“We’ve had a bunch of roadblocks and hurdles that we have gotten past,” he said. “We learned so much that we are rewriting and enlarging it and talking about taking it nationwide.”