[OSM-talk] Own aerial photos

[Blumpsy]

A few months ago, the BBC aired a wildlife programme titled "Iron 
Curtain, Ribbon of Life". It dealt with the former no-man's land between 
the East and West. The strip along those former borders runs over a 
length of 13,000 km, from Finland to Bulgaria.

Here is the program's page on the BBC web site:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00j1bzp

The episode is no longer available through iPlayer, but with a little 
help from Google, you will find it on the Internet.

The programme visits a number of nature conservationists along this 
strip, documenting how local enthusiasts are trying to turn this area 
into nature reserves.

One of the heroes is a forestry researcher by the name of Alpo Hassinen 
who works near the Finnish-Russian border. It's an inaccessible area, so 
he uses an R/C plane for taking aerial photographs. The documentary 
describes how all he has to do is select the area of interest in some 
mapping software, and how the plane then navigates itself, taking 
GPS-references photographs at certain intervals.

This is as technical as the BBC get, so I contacted Alpo for some 
further info.

It turns out they are using a turnkey solution called CropCam:
http://www.cropcam.com

This is from their web site:

"The CropCam is $7,000 USD, highly efficient and user friendly for the 
commercial market. It is a radio control (RC) glider plane equipped with 
a Pentax digital camera, controlled by an autopilot, along with 
pre-programmed ground control software. Available in electric, the 
CropCam will also work with a RC transmitter for manual control of the 
plane.

The CropCam utilizes an autopilot for navigation and control of the 
camera,..."

The brochure claims an altitude of up to 4000 feet (about 1200 m), but 
Alpo pointed out that Finnish regulations dictate to fly no higher than 
150 m, and that the operator must be able to see the plane at all times.

The Cropcam can fly 20-40 km in one flight, mapping 30-100 hectares. In 
one flight they normally take about 300-600 pictures. The flight 
recorder logs GPS coordinates, as well as pitch and roll, but the drift 
or lag of the GPS signal is quite noticeable. Another problem is 
georeferencing and stitching, for which no quick and accurate solution 
seems to exist.

Example photographs from Alpo's work are available here:
http://mekri.joensuu.fi/Kuvat/cropcam/index.htm

Cheers

PS: If you are interested in the BBC programme: Alpo's slot starts at 
21:22 min and lasts for 2:14 min.