Aerial mapping

And these guys are from Ghent - Belgium
Yes we do have more than chocolates and beer!

Chr.

Christ-

But do you have women, or men for Christie Otchingwanigan ?

TNAI

Maybe not vey accurate, but there might be a lot of mapping uses.

Actually, old news by now.
They are now a Trimble Company.

Put on a landing gear and we're in business

fuselage estimated to last 20+/- flights
spare fuselage = 2k

:good:

We had a demo of this recently, and crashed it. Still interested though, when we can get another opportunity to try again.

> We had a demo of this recently, and crashed it.

What were the causes?

Not sure what you mean ...

Christie will be a female over here also Christa, Christiane, ...
Chris may be used for males and females

or were you talking about something else Derek?

Christtttt,

I've used the Gatewing successfully on a few projects here in the Great White North. Fortunately the aviation rules for UAVs here allow commercial use with a permit from Transport Canada.

There is a definite 'sweet spot' for this tool in a number of areas.

Gravity

Christ-

You've the main two attractions in Belgium, as sung by Loretta

But have you young fellers for our colleague Christie Otchingwanigan, a surveyor in northern USA ?

Cheers

Derek

SUATMM

Shut Up And Take My Money 😉

One of the problems with this technology in the US is that the FAA still insists that it's illegal. Even though these little planes are too small and fly too low to cause problems with almost anything... They claim that it could impact things like medical helicopters and so forth, and that seems to be their main argument.

Things have been changing, though... They've started to move toward approving UMVs for police work and "spying" (for things like the War On Drugs, etc.), so if they do that, then the argument is they also approve it for things like construction. It could be very beneficial for natural disasters, as well as things like the collapse of that I-35 bridge that happened a few years back in Minnesota. We'll have to wait and see what happens. It all lies with our politicians. But it could really change our industry, as the technology improves, IF we can get it legalized here in the US.

We have one Ph.D, student here at LSU that's working on such applications for surveying post-disaster areas. Dr. Frank Willis is on his advisory committee.

Incomplete project planning. The Gatewing is an autonomous unit. Once you've programmed it with a flight plan, the coordinate of your takeoff & landing point, and the height of the flightpath then it flies itself. The only instructions that you can send it are to cancel the flight and land immediately, or you can tell it to pause the flightplan and orbit in place then resume later.

Our problem was that the height above ground that it uses for all of the flight is measured from the takeoff location. Our takeoff point was lower than the area of photo coverage and we thought that we'd accounted for that by programming a height of 150m above ground in the plan. What we didn't realize is that at the end of each camera swath the plane needs several hundred meters to make a 180 degree turn and get stabilized for the next set of photos.

The very top of the very tallest tree at the absolute top of the hill 500m away from the project site was just a little bit too high. The impact broke the propeller blades and bent the control arms for the elevons but we were able to find it using the locating transmitter and they apparently were flying it on another project the next day.

Thanks for sharing, Steve.

Georges

> One of the problems with this technology in the US is that the FAA still insists that it's illegal. Even though these little planes are too small and fly too low to cause problems with almost anything... They claim that it could impact things like medical helicopters and so forth, and that seems to be their main argument.
>
> Things have been changing, though... They've started to move toward approving UMVs for police work and "spying" (for things like the War On Drugs, etc.), so if they do that, then the argument is they also approve it for things like construction. It could be very beneficial for natural disasters, as well as things like the collapse of that I-35 bridge that happened a few years back in Minnesota. We'll have to wait and see what happens. It all lies with our politicians. But it could really change our industry, as the technology improves, IF we can get it legalized here in the US.

Well then, what would they say about hobbyists who fly RC model planes and helicopters? I know that the hobbyists usually don't fly quite that high, but it still seems to be about the same thing.

In Canada, recreational fliers ( up to a certain size ) are generally not subject to the same regulations that govern commercial operation of UAVs. The issue is safety of the public and liability of the operator.