[HOT] Fwd: UAVs

Pierre Béland pierzenh at yahoo.fr
Wed Jul 24 19:45:37 UTC 2013


I want also to think Fred for this great job. Badly, I did not have the opportunity to see these UAV fly but the data generated greatly helped us for the HOT Cap-Haitien corridor project, north of Haiti that just ended a few weeks ago.  This provided us recent, well aligned and high quality imagery of Limonade and Fort-Liberte. It greatly facilitated the digitalization process.  


If you use the TMS link provided by Severin and zoom in to street level in Limonade town, you will see by yourself. You will even observe the various pedestrian paths that cross certain parts of  the town. This type of image would also be greateful for watershed studies, to observe waterways and canals.

To access rapidly in JOSM, simply press CTRL-J and provide this url :
http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=19.667506&lon=-72.124731&zoom=20

 
Pierre 



________________________________
 De : Severin MENARD <severin.menard at gmail.com>
À : "hot at openstreetmap.org" <hot at openstreetmap.org> 
Envoyé le : Mercredi 24 juillet 2013 12h37
Objet : [HOT] Fwd: UAVs
 


Hi all,



Sorry to jump a but late into this thread. I am very glad about the discussion about UAVs, as I think it would be a very useful tool for any deployment, even if I never had the time to dedicate myself on this topic. But, regarding the different solutions and experiences already made, we actually have among us someone very proficient on this topic: Frederic Moine. He has been thinking and working on this for a couple of years, did a complete benchmark of the different solutions, had made some tests, is part of several open source UAV projects, built his own plane and different copters, and knows very well all the legal context regarding using these tools in various countries and categories of areas to be mapped (natural, populated, etc.). Beyond that, he is one of the rare persons who have already processed UAVs in humanitarian field within a large organization following the UN rules (IOM), making several product over camps, slum and/or disaster (flooded
 zones after Hurricane Sandy in Haiti) areas. A brief overview of this work can be read here.
I will let him present the details of the state of art of UAVs in humanitarian field. The summary is that, as of today, there are few projects mature enough to combine both ability to fly, robustness, weight (these aspects impacting a lot the security: the lighter the UAV, the less potential damages if it crashes. 500g is a good limit), softwares (flight + post-processing) and legal agreements. This explains that over the last year, while participating into OS projects in order to make them progress, he made deployed the Sensefly ebee UAV, that combines all the listed requirements listed above. 
Fred is really committed into spreading the use of this kind of tool providing decisive imagery, to the point of funding himself the deployment of Drone Adventures (an Association of people working for SenseFly, I think) in Haiti with three UAVs in exchange for leaving one of them in the country to the local mapping community. You can see the results in this video. Fred also participated to the post-processing of the raw imagery (which according him is always a step that takes time - he told me he would have had more time to avoid some slight deformations for this one) taken over different spots in Northern and Western parts of Haiti. 
If you want to see the results in JOSM, please install this tms, hosted by OSM France:
tms:http://wms.openstreetmap.fr/tms/1.0.0/iomhaiti/{zoom}/{x}/{y}

Sincerely,

Severin
 




----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Message: 1
>Date: Tue, 23 Jul 2013 14:04:16 +0000
>From: "Banick, Robert" <Robert.Banick at redcross.org>
>To: Andrew Buck <andrew.r.buck at gmail.com>, Alex Barth
>        <alex at mapbox.com>
>Cc: Joseph Pollack <josephrichardpollack at gmail.com>,
>        "hot at openstreetmap.org" <hot at openstreetmap.org>
>Subject: Re: [HOT] UAVs
>Message-ID: <CE1404F2.1213C%robert.banick at redcross.org>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
>Ditto what Andrew said. Otherwise I'm on board with you Alex :)
>
>Robert Banick | GIS Coordinator | International Services | ? American Red Cross<http://www.redcross.org/>
>
>From: Andrew Buck <andrew.r.buck at gmail.com<mailto:andrew.r.buck at gmail.com>>
>Date: Monday, July 22, 2013 1:22 PM
>To: Alex Barth <alex at mapbox.com<mailto:alex at mapbox.com>>
>Cc: Robert Banick <robert.banick at redcross.org<mailto:robert.banick at redcross.org>>, Joseph Pollack <josephrichardpollack at gmail.com<mailto:josephrichardpollack at gmail.com>>, "hot at openstreetmap.org<mailto:hot at openstreetmap.org>" <hot at openstreetmap.org<mailto:hot at openstreetmap.org>>
>Subject: Re: [HOT] UAVs
>
>It is not the rendering and serving of the tiles that is the problem with the imagery processing, it is the orthorectification that is tricky.
>
>UAV's are required to fly quite low which means that the individual frames are quite small, requiring tens or hundreds to cover even a small town.  At this scale it is not possible to manually orthorectify these images and more sophisticated techniques need to be applied.  This is the part of the solution that Robert was referring to.
>
>-AndrewBuck
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>Message: 2
Date: Thu, 18 Jul 2013 10:31:47 +0200
From: Jonas Shorn <shornjonas at googlemail.com>
To: Heather Leson <hleson at ushahidi.com>
Cc: Joseph Pollack <josephrichardpollack at gmail.com>,
        "hot at openstreetmap.org" <hot at openstreetmap.org>
Subject: Re: [HOT] UAVs
Message-ID:
        <CAEb_yQ+jyOrAZROi+TN2b3oE-CL8FoWe6T489sNDcrZ-wsC5NQ at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

Joseph,

great to see you here and in this context! You know there are opportunities
at the doorstep here :-)

Lets connect when you are back from geneva!


2013/7/18 Heather Leson <hleson at ushahidi.com>

> HI Joseph, I'd be interested in seeing this research from at risk
> assessment angle.
>
> heather
>
> On Tue, Jul 9, 2013 at 3:56 PM, Joseph Pollack <
> josephrichardpollack at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Dear Hotties,
>>
>> I've been periodically (every 3-6 months or so for 3 year) been posting
>> in crisis mappers and HOT about using UAVs for mapping and other stuff. I'm
>> really happy you guys are now talking about it!
>>
>> I've been looking at low-cost UAVs for a while now, and I think that
>> technology has reached the maturity whereby we can instrument a rig with
>> sensors for a total cost of less than 5 thousand dollars. Which means we
>> can basically start shipping these to wherever VERY cheaply, with a HUGE
>> impact! This is the state of technology TODAY imho.
>>
>> I'm immensely keen to contribute in substance to a white paper, a focus
>> group and so on. And I'm even more keen to start actually fundraising,
>> buying and instrumenting these in my back yard, at the lab or wherever, and
>> to start shipping these to groups that can use them. I know a couple, and
>> I'm sure you guys know of more that could use something like this.
>>
>> Civilian-led high-res imagery for civilian-initiatives : it's the crowd
>> watching over itself - we're already here! Let's make this happen. Kindly
>> consider me a ressource for however you're deciding to run with this. But
>> let's run with this most definitely!
>>
>> Warm Regards,
>>
>> -Joseph.

>> 
Message: 1
Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2013 14:53:36 +0100
From: Jonathan <bigfatfrog67 at gmail.com>
To: hot at openstreetmap.org
Subject: Re: [HOT] UAVs
Message-ID: <51E55060.3040601 at gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-2; format=flowed

Have you seen this?

http://www.openrelief.org/home/

Jonathan
(bigfatfrog67)

On 15/07/2013 20:47, Lukasz Kruk wrote:
> Dear Joseph, Dear HOTties,
>
> Thanks for your UAVs post (I hope my messages goes into the right
> thread...). It got me really quite interested in joining the
> discussion.
>
> We're looking to get a UAV with the main purpose being to take aerial
> pictures of refugee camps that we map. Currently, we use satellite
> images to do something like http://www.unitar.org/unosat/node/44/1764
> - but having our own system would hopefully allow for more frequent
> and higher resolution pictures.
>
> Basically, I don't even know where to start research. I've come up
> with a list of considerations, but I'm sure there's much more that I'm
> missing
>
> * Because of sensitive context, the UAV shouldn't look intimidating -
> a more toy-like appearance is a requirement
> * How is the UAV controlled - remote or programmed flight path (i'm
> assuming the latter is rather advanced - and consequently pricey?)
> * Can it carry a camera, and how is the camera mounted to ensure
> top-down viewing angles for successful image georeferencing later on
> * What camera would be appropriate for the intended use
> * Based on a quick calculation, it looks to me that with a typical
> wide angle lens (28mm-equivalent) the side image is about half of
> camera distance (so in this case - elevation). This means that if I
> want to capture a 1x1km area, the camera should fly 2km above ground.
> This doesn't seem to be feasible both because of flight height and
> off-nadir angles, so it probably means a lot of smaller images and
> then stitching?
> * Finally, just as a general guideline, the budget I'd have is rather
> fluid. If a workable solution can be achieved for a few thousand -
> great, but if something vastly superior can be done for 10k, I would
> definitely consider that as well
>
> However, in order not to get in over my head, I was thinking that a
> DJI Phantom which seems to be all the rage on the internet these days,
> fitted with a Pentax WG-3 (which has interval shooting mode) looks
> like a set that could provide genuinely useful results for under a
> thousand EUR - or am I completely off the mark here?
>
> I'm sure that some of you has already been through the process and
> there is a lot written on the internet. Could anyone point me
> somewhere I could start reading? Any general comments would be most
> appreciated as well - many thanks in advance!
>
>
> Lukasz



Message: 3
Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2013 09:11:17 +0200
From: Rod Bera <rod at goarem.org>
To: hot at openstreetmap.org
Subject: Re: [HOT] UAVs
Message-ID: <51E4F215.50800 at goarem.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed

Hi all,

To keep the prices low there is a DIY option based on open source tech:
http://ardupilot.com/. It is based on the arduino chip, can be done as
part as a community project or in a fab lab. The result is DIY plane or
helicopter which can support manual as well as automatic flight.

Hope this helps,

Rod



On 15/07/13 22:08, Eric SIBERT wrote:
> Hi Lukasz,
>
>
> > Basically, I don't even know where to start research. I've come up
> > with a list of considerations, but I'm sure there's much more that I'm
> > missing
>
> Have a look at that:
>
> http://www.sensefly.com/home.html
>
>
> > * Because of sensitive context, the UAV shouldn't look intimidating -
>> a more toy-like appearance is a requirement
>
> Yes.
>
>> * How is the UAV controlled - remote or programmed flight path (i'm
>> assuming the latter is rather advanced - and consequently pricey?)
>
> Programmed flight path defined using google map.
>
>> * Can it carry a camera, and how is the camera mounted to ensure
>> top-down viewing angles for successful image georeferencing later on
>
> Modified (for remote control) compact camera. Provided with the setup.
>
>> * What camera would be appropriate for the intended use
>
> The one provided.
>
>> * Based on a quick calculation, it looks to me that with a typical
>> wide angle lens (28mm-equivalent) the side image is about half of
>> camera distance (so in this case - elevation). This means that if I
>> want to capture a 1x1km area, the camera should fly 2km above ground.
>> This doesn't seem to be feasible both because of flight height and
>> off-nadir angles, so it probably means a lot of smaller images and
>> then stitching?
>
> Have a look at their website for what can be done in term of
> resolution and covered area. They use stitching.
>
>> * Finally, just as a general guideline, the budget I'd have is rather
>> fluid. If a workable solution can be achieved for a few thousand -
>> great, but if something vastly superior can be done for 10k, I would
>> definitely consider that as well
>
> 10k of what? ;-)
>
> They told me about 15 k? for the ebee with stitching software.
>
>
>> However, in order not to get in over my head, I was thinking that a
>> DJI Phantom which seems to be all the rage on the internet these days,
>> fitted with a Pentax WG-3 (which has interval shooting mode) looks
>> like a set that could provide genuinely useful results for under a
>> thousand EUR - or am I completely off the mark here?
>
> We may imagine cheaper planes that the above mentioned one. I just
> discovered 3D printed plane:
>
> http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20737-3d-printing-the-worlds-first-printed-plane.html#.UeRWOawvjaI




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