Swift Engineering, which provides products, technologies and “fully integrated product development solutions from ideation to market,” recently flew its Swift020 UAS over densely forested areas within the Ishikawa prefecture in Japan.

Swift Engineering worked with a number of entities to complete the flights from July 23 to 25, including the local forest cooperative association, key forestry industry leaders and members of the Ishikawa Prefecture Research Center for Agriculture and Forestry.

Sustainable forest management can be difficult for a variety of reasons such as the density of the trees, the size of the area, and the “problematic topography.” For Rick Heise, President, and CSO of Swift Engineering, Ishikawa’s forest terrain made it a “great environment” to showcase Swift020’s fully autonomous capabilities.

“We were able to take off and land vertically in a small restricted area,” Heise says. “Our ability to quickly transition to efficient horizontal flight enables us to cover a vast amount of area in a short amount of time.”

According to Swift Engineering, the Swift020 UAS was developed for these types of missions. With its ability to take off and land like a helicopter and transition to horizontal flight, the UAS has a considerable advantage over traditional quadcopters.

Some of the oldest cedar trees in the Ishikawa prefecture are located in the forested area. With this in mind, “culling” old growth is a conservation method to ensure the future and health of the environment.

“In less than a 15-minute demonstration, which is barely 10% of the endurance of the Swift020 UAS, we were able to collect over 180 acres worth of high fidelity data to support sustainable harvesting plans for the forestry industry,” says Alex Echeverria, Director of Business Development for Swift Engineering.

“By utilizing cutting edge data collection, analysis and reporting technologies, we are able to provide a full turn-key service model that provides our customers with the right information when they need it.”

Swift’s proprietary software suite was able to optimize the data collection of high definition imagery, and provide next day 3-D imaging to identify the overall health conditions of the forest.

“We provided a 3D point cloud, 2D Geo referenced Orthomosaic imagery, as well as elevation and terrain data for the site,” Echeverria adds.

“The imagery we provided can be easily shared among decision-makers to aid in greater collaboration across all organizations. This type of fast response and collaboration will provide forestry officials on-demand, real time actionable data to help manage resources in an efficient and cost-effective manner.”

The first UAS featuring X-Blade Technology, the Swift020 UAS is the result of more than 18 years of research and development in unmanned systems, Swift Engineering says.

The Swift020 UAS vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) technology takes off and lands anywhere, and transitions to efficient fixed-wing forward flight without extra launch and recovery equipment, which allows it to lower operational time and cost.

The Swift020 UAS family of systems can be used in a variety of fields, including oil and gas, maritime and for scientific research.