SkyKelpie wows audience with world-first remote drone mustering demo, live from evoke^AG. 2025

Luke Chaplain, Founder of SkyKelpie is no stranger to risk. He funded his agricultural education at Marcus Oldham College with rodeo prize money, worked as a TV stuntman, and dabbles in film production. But for an agritech startup, few things are riskier than a live tech demo – especially one that depends on cutting-edge technology, done in a room full of industry leaders, and applied to a herd of cattle with zero buy-in to your success.

First of its kind regulatory approval – for evoke^AG. and beyond

Luke’s on-stage control centre may have looked simple but bringing it to life was anything but. Luke and the SkyKelpie team achieved a major regulatory breakthrough by securing Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) approval for the mobile remote operations centre that made this demo possible.

“SkyKelpie was the first in Australia to deploy a mobile remote operation centre,” Luke explained. “It means I can set up anywhere, even at a conference, as long as conditions on the ground are right.”

Among the conditions currently needed to fly a drone remotely – known as Extended Visual Line of Sight (EVLOS) – is the presence of a trained onsite observer, who maintains sight of the drone and communicates with the pilot to manage ground and air risks.

With Luke connected to his observer via phone, the audience was invited to eavesdrop on their conversation, which included notes about not just cattle location, but winds, terrain, and confirmation of the whereabouts of a low-altitude aircraft.

Sci-fi meets serenity

“Herding animals have a flight zone,” Luke explained as the drone started to ascend out of its dock. “And when we use a mustering tool to apply pressure, be that a motorbike, helicopter, or drone, the animals move away.”

“Keeping them, light and responsive means releasing pressure when movement starts, while still keeping them engaged.”

That delicate balance is the art of aerial stockmanship. And perhaps I’d watched too much Outback Ringer (with its dramatised storylines of families risking life and limb to muster the Top End in helicopters and bull catchers) but I expected Luke’s drone muster to be a little more… dramatic.

Cows didn’t scatter into trees. They didn’t recalcitrantly ignore the drone. There was no shaky camera footage making you feel like it was about to fall out of the sky. No lost connection. No outward display of stress from Luke. It really was just – calm.

From 90 metres up, the drone camera scanned the paddock, capturing a quick visual on the cattle amid the rolling hills, before descending to, as Luke called it, “engage” them.

At 66 metres, a lead animal threw the drone a curious glance – engaged. At 23 metres, the cattle began walking. By 13 metres, they had mobbed up under the paddock’s lone tree. But even that was easily navigated, a gentle lateral pressure move, an aerial stockmanship technique called a ‘T,’ setting them back on track.

Ever the showman, Luke finished the demo by pushing the cattle through the farm’s front gate. “Why not? If we’re going to do a world-first live demo, let’s make it tricky,” he quipped. Yet even this was executed with ease, the cattle ambling through the gate like invited house guests.

The business case for low-stress handling

It’s hard to capture just how calm the muster was. No shouting, no revving engines – just a quiet, calculated dance between technology and livestock.

This low-stress approach isn’t just an ethical choice for Luke. “It’s good business, too,” he told the crowd. “Stress-free cattle perform better, particularly those heading straight to sale or slaughter.”

“And it works for breeding stock, too. Calves learn behavioural cues from their mothers, so if mum jumps at something, the calf learns to do that, too,” he explained.

Over the horizon: More autonomy, less regulation

With support from Meat & Livestock Australia (MLA) and the Queensland government, SkyKelpie is integrating an image detection model for precision animal tracking, leading to algorithmic-assisted mustering – akin to Tesla’s autonomous driving.

“But when I talk about autonomy,” Luke clarified, “I mean drones as just another tool on the shelf.”

“Don’t sack your workforce. Don’t sell your dogs and horses. Drones are case by case. And while we have pretty much eradicated helicopters across the 300,000 head mustered by our drones, that’s not going to be the case for all of Australia just yet.”

Regulatory hurdles remain. Many customers operate under the landholder rule, requiring drones to stay within visual line-of-sight – an impractical ask for extensive grazing operations.

“In remote rural areas, especially if you’re staying under 400 feet [100 feet below the lowest crewed aviation range] the air risk and the ground risk are really very low. So, I’d like to see CASA get more progressive,” Luke told the crowd.

Gamers as the next generation of contract musterers

Having explained the rousing reception his simulator had received on Startup Alley, Luke mused that SkyKelpie is keen to enter the world of gaming.

“We’ve done some world-leading work on the algorithms of the animals in our drone training simulator, and on drone physics so that it feels good to operate. Making a game purely for entertainment could be something we look at.”

“Potentially, there’s a skilled workforce of gamers out there who could fly remotely,” he mused.

But for now, the focus remains clear: getting drones into the hands of graziers and proving that the future of mustering isn’t coming – it’s already here.

To watch the full SkyKelpie live drone muster demo from evoke^AG. click here.

To read our Q&A with Luke Chaplain, where he digs into the challenges to scaling drone uptake, click here.

And to connect with Luke, visit the SkyKelpie listing on grow^AG., here.