Agriculture Victoria has commissioned a Victorian-based company Drone-Hand to explore and test drone technology as part of the Dingo Drone Pilot Project.
The project will assess whether drone-enabled monitoring can provide timely and accurate information to support proactive livestock protection activities to reduce impacts on private land.
Using advanced drone imagery and artificial intelligence, the pilot will investigate the feasibility of more efficiently monitoring wildlife exclusion fencing for digging and breach activity in north-west Victoria.
In north-east Victoria, the project will also help to build, train and validate machine-learning models capable of detecting and identifying dingoes that move onto farmland.
Agriculture Victoria program manager Stephen Baud said the pilot project would see if the technology had the potential to provide farmers with additional tools to help minimise livestock losses and improve animal welfare outcomes.
“We recognise the challenges facing Victorian livestock producers and want to test this technology to see if drones can complement and strengthen existing livestock protection measures,” Mr Baud said.
The project will be delivered in partnership with Drone-Hand, which specialises in autonomous drone and AI solutions to help producers monitor livestock, herd health and on-farm infrastructure.
“We're excited to work with Agriculture Victoria to trial our drone systems to further support livestock farmers – this technology has the potential to provide a tangible new management tool that can be seamlessly incorporated into most livestock operations impacted by ongoing predation challenges,” Drone-Hand founder and CEO Edward Barraclough said.
Agriculture Victoria has invested $15 million through the AgTech Regional Innovation Network initiative to grow Victoria’s AgTech sector and support emerging companies to commercialise innovative solutions.
Drone-Hand was a key participant in that program which helped the company to accelerate its growth and bring its autonomous drone and AI technologies closer to market.
The pilot project will initially focus on Victoria’s north-west and north-east to add additional support measures being introduced in this region, including the Yanac Dingo Exclusion Fence Program.
This proof-of-concept trial will evaluate the effectiveness of drone technologies in supporting livestock producers and informing future approaches to dingo management across Victoria.
The initial phase of the trial will run until June next year.
If successful, the next phase will focus on testing and refining the drone technology to support future deployment on Victorian farms.
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