Moonhack: coding, drones & sustainability

At Chaseman we’re big believers of giving back as much as we push forward, so when one of our colleagues dropped the Moonhack 2020 challenge on our desk, we knew it was something we wanted to support.

Our resident techie, Simon Heal, volunteers a few hours each week at a local code club, helping a future generation of developers get a kick-start by teaching them the basics of coding.

Every year he gets involved with a global initiative called Moonhack that encourages more children to code. The project holds a series of challenges that can be completed online, and this year’s task really caught our eye.

Drone Planting Moonhack was born out of an idea by Code Club Australia. With the country having suffered one of its most traumatic summers, facing bushfires, hail and floods,  the natural environment taking a bit  of a beating. They created this task to shine a light on climate change, with youngsters taking control  of a drone that could plant hundreds of seeds remotely to help reforestation. It’s a cool project that’s already made it to market across the pond.

Based out of the US, Droneseed has the technology in place to use robotics to plant seeds across difficult terrain. Doing everything from planting, spraying, and protecting the saplings, to then monitoring growth - the company is looking to mitigate climate change by making reforestation scalable. As we know reforestation is just one way people are using drones for scalable operations, we’ve already seen multiple use cases for these machines to support pre-planting and field prep in agriculture, as well as helping with fertilisation and crop management.

With offices in Australia and being a staunch supporter of clean energy and sustainable agriculture, the Chaseman team set their aspiring coders to work.