[Osmf-talk] [OSM-dev] low altitude aerial images layer at OpenStreetMap

Oleksiy Muzalyev oleksiy.muzalyev at bluewin.ch
Wed Aug 26 05:36:32 UTC 2015


Hello Jaak,

Please, note that flying an UAV by waypoints (autopilot) is limited by 
regulations and in hardware by No-Waypoint-Zones: 
http://www.dji.com/fly-safe/category-gs , it is 8 km around all major 
airports.

However, translational flights above a city are possible with UMX 
Airplanes (Ultra Micro eXtreme Planes). The drones are very light and 
small, they are made from a foam, but a powerful flight-controler 
(onboard computer) make them stable and airworthy. They can fly with the 
speed about 100 km/h (landing is still hard as with all fix-wing and 
should be trained first on an UAV simulator).

GoPro 4 Session camera is water-sealed up to 10 m depth, but it is not 
necessary for aerial shooting, neither inbuilt WiFi. I mean a quality HD 
camera could even lighter than 72 grams and suitable for an UMX aircraft.

Low altitude panoramic aerial photos could be published also at 
Wikipedia. For example, I published the image of the Akkerman fortress 
at this article, in Gallery section: 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi . On this photo one 
can see not only the entire medieval fortress and also the excavation of 
the Tira, an ancient Greek and later Roman colony (in the right lower 
corner). And as we were told at the conference in NYC earlier this year 
there will be in future a link between Wikipedia articles, data and the OSM.

Best regards,
Oleksiy

On 26/08/15 07:51, Jaak Laineste wrote:
>
> Does anyone have experience using it in real life?  Speciality of 
> UAV/drone mapping is that you cover really small area, like with 
> mapknitter, but you pre-process a lot. AFAIK the typical scenario of 
> UAV mapping is following:
>
> 1. use http://planner.ardupilot.com/ (or other soft your drone maker 
> gives/supports) to plan your mission
> 2. do your mission, have thousands of images and separate GPS log as 
> result.
> 3. process your images. The most popular/best soft for this seems to 
> be Agisoft Photoscan Pro. It is much more than just stitching: also 3D 
> model needs to be created (using SfM). It is really heavy work: for 
> 30-minute shooting your computer would process them for an hour or 
> two. Not practical yet for the cloud.
> 4. georeference your data. For the small area and high resolution GPS 
> (with error ~5m or more) is often not enough, so you may need 
> pre-measured control points, use good base reference map data or other 
> method to do it. But it really depends on your use case.
> 5. Agisoft can export DEM (3D) and GeoTIFF as result.
> 6. Now data sharing - my original question. I guess I can upload my 
> geotiff to openaerialmap or mapknitter, still there are several concerns:
>
> a) none of the tools seems to take my DEM data, so I cannot share it.
> b) usability as OSM mapper for very small area maps (100x100m 
> perhaps). Openaerialmap UX question, can I find the images easily.
> c) usability as image viewer - as end-user I’d expect something closer 
> to streetview, not to-down 2D map. At least show it as 3D model what I 
> already have.
> d) why would anyone really need it? OSM has low (“GPS level”) 
> accuracy, so for general mapping it may be often way more faster and 
> const-effective just to survey the area using handheld GPS and piece 
> of paper. I can see some use cases:
>  - new city district/quarter, not in satellite/aerial yet. You should 
> have quite big coverage UAV (e.g. glider, not just quadrocopter), 
> otherwise manual mapping could be more effective.
>  - area is not physically accessible by foot
>  - shared geo-imagery is byproduct of your nice new toy picture 
> collection.
>  - because I can, it is fun etc - probably most common reasons today
>
> Jaak
>
>> On 26 Aug 2015, at 02:22, Liz Barry <ebarry at gmail.com 
>> <mailto:ebarry at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>> +1 to openaerialmap and opendronemap
>>
>> Mapknitter.org <http://Mapknitter.org> also connects your imagery 
>> into osm editors
>>
>> On Aug 25, 2015 11:01 AM, "Oleksiy Muzalyev" 
>> <oleksiy.muzalyev at bluewin.ch <mailto:oleksiy.muzalyev at bluewin.ch>> wrote:
>>
>>     Hi Blake,
>>
>>     A quadrocopter cannot be flown higher than 150 meters due to
>>     regulations. Usually a flight in a city happens happens like
>>     this. I carefully select a takeoff & landing ground. It could be
>>     a lawn in a park, a grass area, empty construction site, etc.
>>     preferably early in the morning.
>>
>>     I switch on the GoPro to make one photo per second, then I take
>>     off and fly only above this empty area. So practically it is out
>>     of the question to fly above a city freely to make orthorectified
>>     imagery of the whole city. However panoramic low altitude (50 -
>>     150 meters) aerial photos could be shot in all directions and are
>>     complimentary to satellite imagery. And it is possible to find
>>     such an area for takeoff and safe landing almost everywhere.
>>
>>     As for programming this feature, an image is just uploaded,
>>     coordinates and camera direction are saved in a database for this
>>     image. Maybe also a rating system.
>>
>>     Prosumer UAVs progressed a lot this year. Now it has a Fail Safe
>>     - returning to the point where it took-off automatically,
>>     Home-Lock, - if a pilot lost orientation, it starts moving to the
>>     pilot the shortest way, Course-Lock - independent of yaw, forward
>>     remains forward (very useful at altitude higher than 100 meters,
>>     when it is hard to see the UAV's orientation). So it is
>>     relatively easy and safe to pilot. It also has now
>>     self-tightening propellers. I takes about a minute to put them on
>>     for a flight and remove for a compact transportation.
>>
>>     Also this year the GoPro 4 Session camera appeared. It weighs
>>     only 72 grams. F450 DJI can easily carry two such cameras.
>>     Opposite to the StreetView approach it is not necessary to walk
>>     or drive every street to film it. A dozen or two of flights in
>>     good weather will cover the entire city.
>>
>>     And as I already said the system is very robust. Even if a crash
>>     happens, having built it from an ARF kit oneself makes it just a
>>     mater of several minutes to exchange a spare part or two. If
>>     there is a special layer for 50 - 150 meters aerial photos on the
>>     OSM map, it is quite realistic that people could start shooting
>>     such aerial photos and upload. I hope to learn more on this
>>     subject at the conference next month.
>>
>>     Best regards,
>>     Oleksiy
>>
>>     On 25/08/15 14:58, Blake Girardot wrote:
>>>
>>>     Hi,
>>>
>>>     OpenAerialMap is designed to take georeferenced aerial imagery
>>>     and make it publicly available for mapping.
>>>
>>>     OpenDroneMap is processing only software, but you do end up with
>>>     a stitched together georeferenced, orthorectified image and
>>>     point cloud files.
>>>
>>>     http://openaerialmap.org/
>>>
>>>     http://opendronemap.github.io/odm/
>>>
>>>     Cheers,
>>>     Blake
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>     On 8/25/2015 8:49 AM, Jaak Laineste wrote:
>>>>     Hello,
>>>>
>>>>     Btw, what is current state of special services to share the data?
>>>>     openstreetphoto is dead, mapilliary could almost be used [1],
>>>>     but it is
>>>>     not really optimised for it. With drone imagery software you
>>>>     get 3D
>>>>     models “for free” as part of processing/SfM, you often (but not
>>>>     always)
>>>>     georeference your data etc. Anyone knows about  on opendronephoto
>>>>     project yet?
>>>>
>>>>     Sharing with plain photo sharing service just does not feel right.
>>>>
>>>>     Jaak
>>>>
>>>>     [1]
>>>>     http://blog.mapillary.com/technology,/update/2014/05/20/drones.html
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>     2015-08-25 8:44 GMT+03:00 Oleksiy Muzalyev
>>>>     <oleksiy.muzalyev at bluewin.ch <mailto:oleksiy.muzalyev at bluewin.ch>
>>>>     <mailto:oleksiy.muzalyev at bluewin.ch>
>>>>     <mailto:oleksiy.muzalyev at bluewin.ch>>:
>>>>
>>>>         Good morning,
>>>>
>>>>         Here are some of panoramic aerial images which I made in
>>>>     Odessa,
>>>>         Ukraine, with the quadrocopter F450 DJI (flight controller
>>>>     Naza V2
>>>>         with GPS) and camera GoPro 4 Session. One such an image may
>>>>     cover
>>>>         several square kilometers. It does not substitute satellite
>>>>     imagery,
>>>>         but provides useful information for mapping: building levels,
>>>>         land-use, etc.
>>>>
>>>>         And it is not necessary to have hundreds of photos for just
>>>>     one
>>>>         street as with a Street-View approach. So it is not
>>>>     necessary to
>>>>         have the newest servers for such a layer.
>>>>
>>>>         City of Odessa, Ukraine:
>>>>     https://goo.gl/photos/Jnt4TaXuxyw7j6kR8
>>>>
>>>>         and town of Bilhorod-Dnistrovs'kyi:
>>>>     https://goo.gl/photos/ve3NPBSg98v46n5J7
>>>>
>>>>         to get the HD photo download it, do not save from the
>>>>     browser screen.
>>>>
>>>>     <https://goo.gl/photos/Jnt4TaXuxyw7j6kR8>
>>>>     <https://goo.gl/photos/Jnt4TaXuxyw7j6kR8>F450 DJI is assembled
>>>>     from
>>>>         the ARF (almost ready to fly kit), so it is easy to upgrade
>>>>     and
>>>>         repair. It is a robust flying platform. Let alone camera
>>>>     GoPro 4
>>>>         Session.
>>>>
>>>>         Mapillary accept aerial images but a flight should be only
>>>>     4 - 5
>>>>         meters above the ground. I published several aerial images
>>>>     on Google
>>>>         Maps though, and the number of views is in thousands.
>>>>     Images are to
>>>>         be geo-tagged before publishing to Google Maps.
>>>>
>>>>         There will be the conference "How drones changing your
>>>>     business" in
>>>>         Lausanne, Switzerland, on September 14th and 15th 2015:
>>>>     <http://droneapps.co/>
>>>>     <http://droneapps.co/>http://droneapps.co/ . Among attendees are
>>>>         DJI, Airbus, Lufthansa, SenseFly, DB Bahn, SNCF, and others.
>>>>
>>>>         I am also experimenting with fixed-wing UAVs. It is much
>>>>     harder to
>>>>         learn to pilot well, but a fixed-wing UAV is capable by now
>>>>     to fly
>>>>         about 200 km along a waypoint route with an autopilot.
>>>>
>>>>         So the idea is to implement such a panoramic aerial imagery
>>>>     layer at
>>>>         the OSM.
>>>>
>>>>         Best regards,
>>>>         Oleksiy
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>     _______________________________________________
>>>>         dev mailing list
>>>>     dev at openstreetmap.org <mailto:dev at openstreetmap.org>
>>>>     <mailto:dev at openstreetmap.org> <mailto:dev at openstreetmap.org>
>>>>     https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/dev
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>     -- 
>>>>     Jaak Laineste
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>     _______________________________________________
>>>>     osmf-talk mailing list
>>>>     osmf-talk at openstreetmap.org <mailto:osmf-talk at openstreetmap.org>
>>>>     https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/osmf-talk
>>>>
>>
>>
>>     _______________________________________________
>>     osmf-talk mailing list
>>     osmf-talk at openstreetmap.org <mailto:osmf-talk at openstreetmap.org>
>>     https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/osmf-talk
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> osmf-talk mailing list
>> osmf-talk at openstreetmap.org <mailto:osmf-talk at openstreetmap.org>
>> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/osmf-talk
>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/osmf-talk/attachments/20150826/a3bc0429/attachment.html>


More information about the osmf-talk mailing list