Covering 213,543 acres, and originally holding 25 billion barrels of oil, Prudhoe Bay Oil Field on Alaska’s Northern Slope is the largest oil field in North America. It is operated by BP, one of the world’s largest oil and gas companies, with Exxon Mobile and Conoco Phillips Alaska as partners. Being part of the Arctic, Alaska’s Northern Slope is also home to some unique animals like red and arctic foxes, caribou, brown and polar bears. Along the oil field the protection of these wild animals is taken very seriously. Prudhoe Bay enforces strict rules for interacting with wildlife. People are not allowed to honk horns, rev engines, yell at, or interfere with wildlife. Of major concern is the protection of bears in the area, especially polar bears.

Due to the rapid decrease in the polar bear’s sea ice habitat from climate change and the presence of oil companies, polar bears were listed as a threatened species under the US Endangered Act in 2008. Today with around 4,700 known polar bears in Alaska they are considered a highly vulnerable species. In contrast, Alaska is home to about 30,000 (98%) of the country’s species of brown bears (Grizlzy and Kodiak). Though brown bears are not an endangered species, their protection is still a priority on the Northern Slope. Federal law prohibits oil companies from operating within a one mile radius of polar bear dens and a half mile radius of brown bear dens. The noise and vibrations created by the oil company vehicles and machines can greatly disrupt the bear’s hibernation and chance of survival. However, often out of curiosity the bears venture close to the oil company operations posing safety risks for themselves and the humans at work. Keith Cunningham, a researcher from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, said that the oil companies have procedures in place for when that happens. “On the North Slope right now, there are experts who are trained in chasing off bears that get too close to some of these oil production areas,” says Cunningham. “We call that bear hazing. There might be bean bags or fire crackers that are shot at the bear to scare it away.” But Keith and others from the university wanted to know more about the bears to find ways of better protecting them.

The University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF), about 400 miles south of the Prudhoe Bay Oil Field, has become a hub for drone based research projects. Because the school has perfect access to arctic conditions it has proven to excel in testing drones in such environments. UAF is the home of one of 6 official FAA UAV test sites, the Pan-Pacific UAS Test Range Complex (PPUTRC). The university runs a program out of this test site called the Alaska Center for Unmanned Aircraft Systems Integration (ACUASI). The ACUASI’s mission “Is to maintain a world class research center for unmanned aircraft systems, providing integration of unique payloads and supporting pathfinder missions within government and science communities, with a special emphasis on the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions. Develop, test, and ultimately exploit emerging unmanned aircraft technology and its uses to create a positive economic and social benefit within the State of Alaska.” As a research assistant professor, Keith Cunningham has often worked drone data systems. Through ACUASI he and his team decided to use drones to help monitor the bears along the Northern Slope.

They already had a drone ready to go for this mission. “The university actually builds its own unmanned aircraft systems,” said Cunningham. “And we have one that is designed specifically for research and development. And we call it the Ptarmigan. The Ptarmigan is the state bird of Alaska. It’s got six propellers, it flies like a helicopter. It takes off vertically, and it lands vertically.” UAF’s website describes the Ptarmigan drone as such: “The Ptarmigan hexacopter has a 1.5 kg maximum payload and a nominal flight time of approximately 20 minutes. The Ptarmigan is based on the DJI S800 airframe and a 3-D Robotics open-source autopilot (currently APM 2.6). The backbone of this system is a custom integration board that communicates commands between the autopilot and the aircraft motor, landing gear, as well as payloads that may need to communicate directly with the autopilot. The design and integration of this system was entirely performed by ACUASI engineers and UAF engineering students. It is a general-purpose workhorse designed for flexibility in both payload and avionics; the flexibility of the platform quickly made it one of ACUASI’s most-used systems for accomplishing a variety of missions, including arctic research, infrastructure monitoring, and disaster preparedness/first responder support.”

To track the bears the team attached a thermal sensing camera to the drone that would be able to detect a bear even when it is in hibernation. Before running these tests on actual bears in the wild Cunningham and his team set up artificial wooden dens to mimic those that would be built by polar or brown bears. Within the dens they placed a device that emited a 60 watt signature matching the heat signature of a sleeping bear. “These infrared cameras basically spot emitted thermal heat,” Cunningham said. Besides searching for thermal heat, weather station were set up outside of the mock dens to track wind speed, direction, and temperature, and the depth and density of the snow. The data collected by the weather stations provided the researchers with information on how the drone works in such conditions.

Once the trials on the fake dens were complete, Cunningham and his team began using the drone to track for bears that had already been tagged with radio collars to create a complete data set. The ultimate goal of this mission was to collect data that could be given to the oil and gas companies operating on the Northern Slope so they can make accommodations to keep the wild bears safe. If the companies knew exactly where the bear’s dens were, they could map out their operations safely. The research also went to strengthen the efforts being put into the ACUASI, leading to the Ptarmigan becoming one of the UAF’s most reliable drone research tools.