Over the past decade, aerial photogrammetry has quietly transformed marine mammal research. Researchers have historically relied on data collection approaches such as oblique Photo ID, an important technique that involves capturing photos of an animal at the water's surface. Drones have increasingly become a powerful tool that allow researchers to capture data directly above a marine animal. This eye in the sky approach yields rich data sets that characterize important aspects of marine life such as body conditions and measurements, group dynamics, or submerged orientation.
The shift toward drone usage set the stage for another shift: bringing that same capability to research programs where drone platforms must meet federal compliance requirements (NDAA-compliant). Drone Amplified built D.A. Flight to make sure that compliance didn't mean compromise.
We talked with Greg Schorr of Marine Ecology and Telemetry Research (MarEcoTel) about what it's actually like to run D.A. Flight on a compliant platform in the field, offshore, tracking some of the hardest-to-study animals on the planet. His team's work offers a clear case study in what changes when compliant hardware finally gets software built for the job.
Bringing a Compliant Platform Up to the Standard of the Field
Today, the hard part for researchers operating under these requirements has been finding an NDAA-compliant platform that could still deliver precise scientific data in an isolated, punishing marine environment.
Drone Amplified's approach was to integrate D.A. Flight directly with DOD-approved platforms like the Freefly Astro, pairing regulatory compliance with the capability researchers actually need. As Greg put it, the photogrammetry work itself isn't cutting-edge anymore—the breakthrough is that the compliant platform researchers are required to use has become genuinely competitive with anything else on the market.
That matters beyond the compliance requirement itself, too. Greg has talked with other researchers, and once he walks them through what D.A. Flight adds on top of the Astro, they're ready to switch over as well. Compliance got researchers to the platform; the software is why they're staying.
The Real Time Savings: D.A. Flight's Workflow
The most dramatic difference D.A. Flight makes isn't in the air—it's in the manual data processing it eliminates afterward.
Before automated workflows like this existed, researchers often had to build disjointed, highly customized rigs: a standalone LiDAR unit bolted to a drone, each with its own power source, its own IMU board, its own GPS clock. Greg described the resulting headache: syncing video against a separate LiDAR data stream, then manually correcting for aircraft pitch. Every one of those steps was a place where error could creep in.
D.A. Flight replaces that entire manual chain with an automated one:
- Integrated metadata — time, lat/long, aircraft heading, and gimbal pitch/yaw are embedded directly into the same file as the imagery, rather than tracked separately.
- True nadir measurements — mounting the LiDAR directly on the gimbal keeps it pointed in the same direction as the camera/images/video. This is important because they are taking measurements from the video.
- Automatic file organization — files are renamed based on metadata timestamps at the end of the day, making it simple to cross-reference against boat data.
Greg's summary of what this means in practice: it now takes about two human steps to do what used to be an error-prone manual process, with very little chance of data entry mistakes creeping in.
That difference—turning a multi-step, error-prone pipeline into a two-step automated one—has enabled MarEcoTel to scale up data collection without scaling up their processing headcount.
Built for Operators Working Miles from Shore
Photogrammetry research doesn't happen in a lab—it happens on a boat, often miles offshore with no land in sight for reference. D.A. Flight's interface is built around that reality:
- On-screen orientation — gimbal pitch lines and directional cues are layered directly on the video feed, so a pilot never has to look away from the target. Greg noted that having a spotter on the boat call out a direction and being able to react just by glancing at the screen, rather than looking up, is a small feature with an outsized safety benefit.
A decluttered feed — the mini-map can be turned off entirely, keeping the camera view unobstructed while tracking a moving animal.
- Dynamic hover and RTL controls — the Return-to-Launch point can be tethered to the moving controller instead of a fixed GPS point, or RTL can be disabled in favor of a simple hover command, so the aircraft doesn't try to fly back to a location the boat has already drifted away from.
MarEcoTel has also changed how they physically fly to work with the software rather than against the ocean: launching and recovering from the rear of the boat while underway, moving with the swell instead of fighting it. Greg explained that moving with the swell effectively shortens the swell period the aircraft has to contend with, and when the aircraft is already stable and moving forward, a pilot is really just making small throttle adjustments with none of the lag that comes from fighting the boat's motion—meaning far more precise control.
Integrations That Extend the Platform
Beyond the core flight software, Drone Amplified's work with the Astro platform has included integrations built specifically for scientific payloads—gimbal-mounted sensor packages (including past work pairing LiDAR with the Sony A7R4), and catch-handle hardware suited to fieldwork on a moving boat.
But perhaps the most crucial asset we bring to researchers is our rapid adaptability. Fieldwork is unpredictable, and off-the-shelf solutions may not cover every edge case. For example, when Greg found that the standard FPV camera wasn't quite giving his team the utility they needed, Drone Amplified immediately went to work. We first designed and deployed a nadir-looking FPV camera. When field testing revealed that setup was still a bit limiting for Greg's specific needs, our team quickly pivoted again. We engineered a custom FPV camera that mounts directly to the LR1, giving him a highly functional first-person view built right into the same gimbal system.
By listening to our customers and iterating rapidly, we ensure the platform evolves at the speed of their research. These are the kinds of details that matter enormously to a researcher trying to launch and recover a drone safely in open water.
What It Adds Up To
MarEcoTel's mission is to build accurate, long-term data on cetacean biology and how human activity affects it—which recently included capturing rare surface behavior in beaked whales, animals Greg has studied for 22 years without seeing that kind of behavior documented before.
The underlying science isn’t new. What's changed is the speed, consistency, and accuracy researchers can now bring to it, on hardware they're required to use anyway. That's the case D.A. Flight makes: not a new method, but a compliant platform finally matched with software built to get the most out of it.
Images collected under authority of NMFS MMPA/ESA Permit No. 27543
###