Bambu Lab's WHASER: A 170g 3D-Printed Device Now Measuring Atlantic Humpback Whales
3D PrintingA 3D-printed drone attachment weighing 170 grams has measured 115 Atlantic humpback whales in the field — data that researchers previously needed expensive research vessels to collect. The device is called WHASER, and the iteration cycle that brought it to production weight was made possible by desktop FDM printing.
Bambu Lab A1 Mini 3D Printer
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Context
Measuring humpback whale body proportions is a conservation priority. Entanglement in fishing lines and nets restricts whale mobility, feeding, and breathing — and accurately measuring body length and health indicators helps researchers quantify the damage and track recovery. The problem: getting close enough for useful measurements required crewed vessels operating in conditions that are often dangerous and expensive to sustain.
Drone photogrammetry offered a path around that constraint, but early attempts produced bulky, unreliable prototypes. The measurement system needed to be light enough for a standard research drone, rugged enough for field conditions off Iceland, and precise enough to produce scientifically useful data.
The Detail
WHASER — developed by Tandem Ventures and tested with the Whale Wise research team in Iceland’s Westfjords — packs a full sensor array into 170 grams. The device integrates an Arduino ESP32 Nano microcontroller, a LiDAR sensor for altitude measurement, a GPS module, an IMU for orientation data, a microSD card for logging, and a USB-C rechargeable battery. An OLED display shows real-time battery level, LiDAR readings, memory card status, and GPS signal quality for the operator in the field.
The measurement methodology combines photogrammetry — stitching overlapping aerial images into a dimensional map — with GPS location data and infrared imaging. The LiDAR handles the critical variable: exact altitude above the whale. Without accurate altitude, the photogrammetric scale is unreliable. With it, the system can derive body length and proportional measurements from a standard flyover.
Bambu Lab’s FDM printers enabled the iteration that got WHASER to its current form. The revision that reduced the device to 170 grams required redesigning component housings and structural parts — a cycle that would take weeks with traditional manufacturing but compresses to hours with desktop 3D printing. The result is a device that has now accumulated a 115-whale dataset from Atlantic field deployments.
The So What
WHASER isn’t a showcase project — it’s a production research instrument that reached operational status through consumer 3D printing hardware. The case study demonstrates what desktop FDM enables at the intersection of rapid prototyping and field science: iteration cycles fast enough to converge on a design that works in real conditions, at a cost structure accessible to research teams without dedicated manufacturing facilities.
For makers and engineers thinking about field instrumentation, the WHASER architecture offers a reference point: off-the-shelf microcontrollers, commodity sensors, and printable enclosures can assemble into devices capable of serious scientific work. The limiting constraint isn’t the hardware — it’s the design iteration speed, which desktop 3D printing removes.
Photo by Mikhail Nilov on Pexels
Source: Bambu Lab Blog
Content created with AI assistance and reviewed for accuracy.
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