Drones

:good:

yeah, maybe looking to make some cash disappear an investment in new equipment. local dealer/friend keeps talking to me about this one: ebee

If and when you get one, I recommend staying away from the Chimps.

> Slight Hijack... some folks get uncomfortable with the term "drone" which can evoke all kinds of negativity, so the term UAS (Unmanned Aerial Systems) gets used a lot, and whattayaknow.. .even Martha Stewart herself explains halfway through her article on why she loves her drone, says we should call them UAS 😉

Why would the term drone be uncomfortable? She never said we should use 'UAS' she only stated that was the property name for them. She used 'drone' exclusively is describing her drone. Please explain what you are talking about.

But drone is the civilian term. The military has acronyms for everything and 'DRONE' isn't one of them. You almost never here a military person calling UAV's and the like drones. Unless they are talking to civilians and trying to use terms civilians understand.

UAV= unmanned aerial vehicle
UGV= unmanned ground vehicle

I understand your tongue in cheek reaction but to ban a word for PC that is a civilian term makes no sense.

> I would like to hear specifics: brand, cost, precision of data, satisfaction, etc.
> Thanks

I am assuming you are speaking of Close Range Photogrammetry?

Its all about proper data acquisition and image processing. Just about any aircraft (if it can carry the payload) will complete a mission and acquire data. You need to be able to apply fundamental principals of photogrammetry to properly acquire data. Some of the "ready to fly" units like the eBee have airborne RTK and USB triggered cameras. Truth is you don't need this to perform a survey and will pay a premium for these things. As far as platform goes, I think that a simplified system works the best for me. Camera and aircraft: Two systems working in concert, independent of each other. I don't rely on the autopilot to trigger the camera, nor do I rely on the onboard GNSS to position the survey. The cameras I use (Canon "point and shoot") have consumer grade GPS geo-tagging each photo. This initial position is sufficient to get the software processing the imagery. I set pre-marks and rely on the software to rectify the imagery to my control. If something is wrong, it becomes very apparent after you start making checks on pre-marks and photo-ID points.

As far as precision goes; by nature the data is noisy. The better the imagery, the better the data. You will still need to do a lot of pointcloud scrubbing and classifying. The biggest problem I see are the affects of scale projected onto the ortho from flying at low altitudes. If you fly lower, the data gets less noisy, but you cover a significantly smaller area and the affects of scale are greater (treetops and hilltops begin to look distorted). Overall, the image quality can be better than a conventionally flown (manned aircraft) survey.

I would begin with software demos for programs like Pix4D, AgiSoft'S PhotoScan, and others to determine which will work best for you (they all have demo project data). Think about what kind of mapping you will be doing. I don't think you can make a "one-aircraft-fits-all-surveys" determination. Fixed-wing work great for some applications, but not all and the same goes for multi-rotor machines. Look into the possibility of building your own to save some big cash. I would personally stay away from the big commercial offerings unless the budget is not a concern and you don't really worry about the quality of support after initial delivery. I have found that most of the product representatives in the states are really lacking in product knowledge. Europe, Canada and Asia are leaps and bounds ahead of the USA on this.

When you get it and if you can: please post the disclaimer you have to sign alleviating the seller of any obligations in regards to FAA compliance. I would like to see one of those documents.

Good response. Drone shmone. You can strap a camera to a carrier pigeon or a kite or just about anything that flies. The surveying part comes in with the processing of the pictures, GPCs and image clarity. Don't get too caught up in the hype of drones. I think the cooler part is the software like Pix4d or Agisoft that takes the photos and renders point cloud data from them. Since you are a surveyor you have a head start over the layperson that is trying to process the photos without survey grade ground control points.

Good information in some of the responses. I am focusing on the software as the drones are legion. One question remains unanswered, however, is the accuracy of the output. The salesman, said that with 5 targets for control, he could get a vertical accuracy of 0.1'. Now I have heard a rumor that- I know this will sound crazy- salesmen sometimes exaggerate. So is there anyone here who has checked this?

>The salesman, said that with 5 targets for control, he could get a vertical accuracy of 0.1'.

It all depends on how much time you want to spend doing this. It's not like I point a gun at a target and measure the distance. It begins with flight planning: Determining flight lines, flight height, control layout, etc.

Then you execute the mission(s). If you planned it correctly, acquired the data properly and your images are all acceptable for processing, you will then need to scrub the data and extract what you want from the data for your use. Horizontally the data is really good. Vertically is all about how much time you want to spend doing the survey (field and office work). Some jobs are better off doing conventionally.

To answer you question about a tenth; yeah sure, but for that kind of accuracy, flights would need to be pretty low and flight lines would need to be really close together to obtain the overlap in the images. Your camera would need to be able to trigger photo events pretty quickly and you would probably need to be using a multi-rotor to fly slow enough. You won't be mapping large areas like this.

>You need to be able to apply fundamental principals of photogrammetry to properly acquire data.

And you still need to q/c the stuff.

We've just started to use them for Quarterly Volumetric Surveys at a landfill site. Photography stuff, but it's a cleared site, no vegetation. Going to try use them for some future compliance (illegal fill or tree clearing sort of work) projects as well.

You can get ones with LiDAR now too, the Phoenix 2.

I did a suitability report on the one for the landfill you can read if you want;
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B08AvQqZIZe5Tm9ZWTZOZl85b1k/view?usp=sharing

In the end we wouldn't have enough work to support buying (and training) one. You need to be a CASA pilot to fly one, for commercial purposes, in Australia. So that's another level of training too. We're getting an external company to fly it for us.

This is interesting. You mean UAV/Drone equipped with LIDAR? Is it happening already?

This is a pretty good article. http://www.lidarnews.com/PDF/LiDARNewsMagazine_Graham-DronesAndLiDAR_Vol5No1.pdf

I too would like to see the disclaimer...

I haven't seen/heard it used on a live project, but I've seen the unit and some demo data from it.

For the landfill site the managers wanted updated photos anyway. UAV was either/or. Couldn't carry both.

> We've just started to use them for Quarterly Volumetric Surveys at a landfill site. Photography stuff, but it's a cleared site, no vegetation. Going to try use them for some future compliance (illegal fill or tree clearing sort of work) projects as well.

CLEVER - using them to spy on the public in order to bring them into compliance. Why wait for the Google Earth images to be updated to look in back yards, when you can simply spend a few thousand dollars to buy a UAV? You could park on the public street and just fly over their property taking pictures.

The thought of it makes me want to hone up my skeet skills. Call me crazy.

We could, I suppose, just fly anywhere we wanted.

All our work is off the back of public complaints. Survey is only called in after mediation and often involves entry under warrant. It's currently done by field parties. So essentially we'll be doing the same, but with new equipment, is hardly anything to get your knickers in a knot over. For photogrametry to work properly you need known ground control points anyway. Remnant vegetation also involves an arborist walking the site with us.

The 2 main compliance jobs we do are; Native remnant vegetation being cleared by developers. Illegal filling in waterways and flood zones, which means untold problems for those upstream during a flood event.

Sorry, could not resist. I should not have posted that per the forum rules. Sorry Wendell.

I am interested in how drones can be leveraged for typical surveying tasks.
When I was young, I envisioned that we would simply fly over a parcel and do the topography and boundary survey from the air. We are now actually getting close to that.

Drones - a little history

> There was little controversy in a past thread about the term "drone", and that somehow it was civilian term, and not related to any military uses. If so, the media (and just about every member of the public) would be way off base. A word is just a word, but is the AUVSI (the biggest advocacy and industry association for unmanned systems of all kinds) way off base for preferring to disassociate from the term "drone", which they believe evokes too much of the military aspects?
>
> OK, lets examine thee premise that the term "drone" is purely civilian in nature. History does not wholly support that idea.
>
> Last Tuesday at the NSPS/MAPPS conference in Arlington (that also hosted the very-well-attended-and-wonderful NGS Sumnmit) the keynote speaker was Jim Williams, Manager, Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Office, FAA. his speech was very informative, covering the current exemptions process and the proposed 107 rules for small UAS (more about that at another time).
>
> He opened his speech talking about bees (of course everyone knows the origin would be related to bees); how the drone bee does nothing more but hang around til mating time, fly one-trip to the queen and then expire. He went on to explain (with photos and citations to back it up) that notion of the one-function-trip became the generic name for radio guided ack-ack targets developed by the Brits in the 30's. The term had been used for many things prior to that, but the RC & RAF connection is generally viewed as the origin in this context.
>
> Looked for citations; yep, even Defense News (and if they do not know about defense matters then who does?) has a short summary. There was even the RC target system developed by Brit (comedian actually) Reginald Denny that used the term "drone" in the official acronym TDD-2.
>
> A name is just a name, and I think it is a little silly sometimes, but the it is hard to deny that the word can get associated with the military and surveillance uses (real and imagined) that make many folks uncomfortable. So it is not a surprise associations like the AUVSI and (this is an interesting irony) the RAF is trying to distance itself from a term they likely had a hand in creating.
>
> Drone on... or is it UAS on, or UAV on, or RPAS, or UCAV on? 😉

Man really? You are trying to take a term that is rarely, if ever, used by the military and somehow justify why the word drone is so terrible. When the fact is you admitted to using the term until somebody that I can only describe as swathed about the brain, told you how terrible those drones, that protect us by the way, are when they kill.

I can't help but think that you are one of those guys that doesn't like to be wrong on something. I tell you what we will just go with the entire military uses the term drone and it should be banned forever because it is used to kill. However we also need to ban the words car, truck, suv, and any other name for one of those killing machines that kill more people annually than all drones on the planet combined do. After All the military uses those terms on occasion I am sure.

My whole point to you was the fact that you stated the word 'drone' should not be used because of it's terrible military history of killing and what an uncomfortable word it was. Yet you get in your car every day like it's nothing even though cars kill more people than any drone ever will each year. Do we ban gun, airplane, helicopter, boat, ferry, bomb, knife, or any other items that are used to kill whether accidently (which drone do also) or by design (which cars do). People run other people down and kill them every year. Oh but lets just put down the drones because they are 'military'. That terrible military that does nothing but kill indiscriminately. Yeah right. 😉