[UAS] Youtube vide from UAS flights on Walnut Gulch yesterday

[Macarthur, Robert - (robmac)]

Thanks!

From: Swetnam, Tyson L - (tswetnam)
Sent: Monday, October 12, 2015 8:35 AM
To: Macarthur, Robert - (robmac); Mcclaran, Mitchel P - (mcclaran); uas at list.cals.arizona.edu
Subject: Re: Youtube vide from UAS flights on Walnut Gulch yesterday


Good morning Robert et al.,



1) We used two USGS benchmarks and 4 RTK points that were measured from a TotalStation for the location of six terrestrial LiDAR targets which are also in the eBee flight are and the octocopter flight lines. Both drones have flight planning software and GPS which keep them on their flight lines. The operator only takes over to launch and land the octocopter before flipping on autopilot.



2) The eBee beams its position back to a Microsoft Surface tablet and you can usually keep an eye on it with your naked eye - or at least a pair of binoclars. The Octocopter is similar and has a laptop that broadcasts its position. It only travelled about 300 meters from the launch location so it was visible during the entire flight. They kept one pair of hawk eyes on their $$$ piece of equipment at all moments while it was in the air and another pair of eyes on the voltage meter on the controls to make sure it was never approaching its flight time limit.



3) Yes - the final product includes an orthorectified image and a point cloud from Structure from Motion for the eBee and a full LiDAR point cloud (100+ ppsm) with co-rectified hyperspectral data associated with each point.



We will be using the terrestrial laser scans to validate the accuracy of both the octocopter LiDAR and eBee point cloud. The idea is that if we can see 'true' ground with the octocopter LiDAR and the manned aircraft LiDAR that was recently flown by USGS/Woolpert, and the eBee can estimate the height of the grass accurately that we can use eBee flights in the future to monitor production and utilization of the grassland and shrublands.



I'll be sure to share the results with everyone once we've got some!

Tyson L. Swetnam

Associate Research Scientist
School of Natural Resources and Environment
Personal website<https://sites.google.com/a/email.arizona.edu/tyson-swetnam/>
Email: tswetnam at email.arizona.edu<mailto:tswetnam at email.arizona.edu>
Office Phone: (520)621-1052
Cellular Phone: (520)247-2293
________________________________
From: UAS <uas-bounces at list.cals.arizona.edu<mailto:uas-bounces at list.cals.arizona.edu>> on behalf of Macarthur, Robert - (robmac) <robmac at ag.arizona.edu<mailto:robmac at ag.arizona.edu>>
Sent: Monday, October 12, 2015 7:48 AM
To: Mcclaran, Mitchel P - (mcclaran); uas at list.cals.arizona.edu<mailto:uas at list.cals.arizona.edu>
Subject: Re: [UAS] Youtube vide from UAS flights on Walnut Gulch yesterday

Way cool!

Questions, mostly about the post-processing: 1.)  how do you ground truth?  Put markers on the ground for known coordinates?  Or do you even need that with the LiDAR?  2.) How does the person running the drone keep on even scans/swaths?  3.) Is the finished product orthoganal-ized and how are the recorded swaths stitched together? (May be behind the times on how this)

Our neighbor was flying a drone the other night - held it over our back yard briefly while Penny and I were outside boozing - really creepy....

From: UAS [mailto:uas-bounces at list.cals.arizona.edu] On Behalf Of Mcclaran, Mitchel P - (mcclaran)
Sent: Friday, October 9, 2015 3:21 PM
To: uas at list.cals.arizona.edu<mailto:uas at list.cals.arizona.edu>
Subject: [UAS] Fw: Youtube vide from UAS flights on Walnut Gulch yesterday




________________________________
From: Swetnam, Tyson L - (tswetnam)
Sent: Friday, October 9, 2015 2:41 PM
To: Mcclaran, Mitchel P - (mcclaran); Heilman, Phil; Temuulen Tsagaan Sankey
Cc: Barron-Gafford, Greg A - (gregbg); Van Leeuwen, Willem J - (leeuw); SNRE Business Office; Marsh, Stuart E - (smarsh)
Subject: Youtube vide from UAS flights on Walnut Gulch yesterday


All,



Linked is a video of Teki's UAV flights at Kendall Grassland on Walnut Gulch Experimental Watershed yesterday.



https://youtu.be/YpNIWaFXQs4



More to come once the data are processed!



Cheers,

Tyson L. Swetnam

Associate Research Scientist
School of Natural Resources and Environment
Personal website<https://sites.google.com/a/email.arizona.edu/tyson-swetnam/>
Email: tswetnam at email.arizona.edu<mailto:tswetnam at email.arizona.edu>
Office Phone: (520)621-1052
Cellular Phone: (520)247-2293
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