Nick Kuhl
Lethbridge Herald
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Steve Myshak and Owen Brown are still finding new and innovative ways to employ their UAVs - unmanned aerial vehicles.
The CEO and vice-president began their company Isis Geomatics in Lethbridge last summer.
The UAVs, which cost around $60,000, use a series of cameras to tag exact locations.
In southern Alberta, they can learn more about the moisture levels in a crop, gather oil lease surveys for reclamation purposes, survey gravel stockpiles for municipalities and provide environmental assessments.
They recently ran a pilot project of "cattle accounting" for MNP.
"Instead of running the cattle through the gates and down the alleys to count them, we just actually fly over the pens and use the thermo camera to take pictures of all of them and do the accounting that way," Myshak explained, adding the UAV they use is called the Aeryon Scout and can fit in a backpack when disassembled
But it's not just being used for the ag industry.
Myshak and Brown have been doing presentations for oil companies in Alberta and may lead to some pilot projects.
They've also received calls from the Maritimes about potato fields, Nigeria for pipeline inspections and Brazil for stockpile surveys after a recent feature in Maclean's magazine.
"There's a couple of bigger ag projects that we're working on that could be pretty good and we're starting to get a lot more interest," Myshak said.
"We're getting a lot of calls from all over the country, not just around Lethbridge."