Working With Geospatial Video

Geospatial video is a helpful tool not only in UAS work but in other fields of work as well. It gives more visual aid to the viewer, and helps people who weren't at the flight be able to understand exactly how the mission was flown. Geospatial video not only shows the location of where the flight was taken on a map,  but also shows the position of the drone in live time as the video plays so you can see where the drone was as it captured video. Below is the video geotagging software we used called, Video GeoTagger.

In the bottom left portion of this image you can see that we browsed our files and found both the video that we captured from the drone, and the meta date from the drone that loaded up the path used and the location on a map where the drone was at that time. In the top left of the program you can see the video that the drone captured on its flight, and on the right side of the screen you can see the path of the drone. This image here is not geotagged yet, meaning that the video and the drone path are not connected and synced yet. 

After clicking Geotag Video and clicking a start point and an end point on the path that matches up with the video, the path will sync to the video and turn red. In this image you see a blue cross hair on the map moving along the path. This is the symbol that shows were the drone is over the path, while the video is running. It matches up so you can see where the drone was, while it was capturing each second of video. 

Geospatial Video is more useful than just a regular video because it gives the viewer more information on the flight. Viewers of these videos can see where the drone was according to ground points that are more familiar to them and common to them. The down side to this kind of video is that it may not be as useful if there aren't good ground point references. If in a field or forest with no major roads or rivers around, it would be difficult still for the user to tell where the drone was flying in relation with the ground. You need good points such as roads and rivers that people are familiar with in order for this software to really be useful. Also this kind of software isn't up to survey grade standards because it doesn't have the accuracy needed to be survey grade.

 https://www.remotegeo.com/new-misb-fmv-support-for-linevision-desktop/ 

Annotated Bibliography and Timeline

The research capstone project my group is proposing is a way to determine the best way to collect forest inventory data. We are comparing unmanned flight using UAV'S and manned aircraft using the same sensors at different altitudes. My job on this team is planning out both the unmanned and manned flights. I must decided proper flight paths, and most importantly the altitude of the flights. The annotated bibliography should be used to help me decided on specific altitudes and flight paths, and other specifics I might not be familiar with when its comes to forestry data. The time line being made its to hold me to moving forward and making progresses weekly. Without a timeline it is easy to let things slide and to not make forward process.

Annotated Bibliography:

Manfreda, S., M. E. McCabe, P. E. Miller, R. Lucas, V. P. Madrigal, G. Mallinis, E. Dor, D. Helman, L. Estes, G. Ciraolo, J. Mullerova, F. Tauro, M. I. de Lima, Jlmp del Lima, A. Maltese, F. Frances, K. Caylor, M. Kohv, M. Perks, G. Ruiz-Perez, Z. Su, G. Vico, and B. Toth. 2018. "On the Use of Unmanned Aerial Systems for Environmental Monitoring." Remote Sensing 10 (4). doi: 10.3390/rs10040641.

This article is about

This article is mostly about reviewing environmental monitoring including soil properties, vegetation and greens conditions, and other environmental characteristics. This is a great paper for starting research for our forestry project. It fits well with what we aim to do and helps with data we will want to look at. 

Los Alamos National Laboratory., United States. Dept. of Energy., and United States. Dept. of Energy. Office of Scientific and Technical Information. Uav Sensor and Survivability Issues. 1996.Web <http://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/366505-mHCkSL/webviewable/>.

This article is about issues and survivability in sensors. This is important because we should always look at issues to try to avoid them preemptively. Reading this article will help with some of the preemptive precautions that we should focus on the keep safety a main focus of our project. 

Merlin, Peter W., and United States. National Aeronautics and Space Administration. History Office. Ikhana Unmanned Aircraft System

Western States Fire Missions. 2009. Monographs in aerospace history 44.Web <http://purl.fdlp.gov/GPO/gpo9015>.

This article is has to do with unmanned aircraft and fire missions. Although fire has nothing to do with my project, this article uses unmanned aircraft for these missions. I assume that these fire missions happen in forest areas so there is some overlap to my project. I am looking at altitudes and flight plans for these missions in the article to see why they chose these details for the flights. 

Sadraey, Mohammad H. Unmanned Aircraft Design : A Review of Fundamentals. Synthesis Lectures on Mechanical Engineering,. 

This article is about fundamentals of unmanned aircraft design. It could help with deciding on what type of drone to use to fly this mission. Reviewing fundamentals is always important when it comes to planning projects like this one. 

Stellingwerf, Donald A., and Yousif A. Hussin. Measurements and Estimations of Forest Stand Parameters Using Remote Sensing. Utrecht: VSP, 1997. 

This article focuses the details of using remote sensing for forestry. This article can give me great insight on what sensors we should use. This also has good information on altitude and mission planning. This article is directly related to the project and will be one of my main sources for the upcoming project. 

United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Agriculture and Forestry. Development of a Special Aircraft for Agricultural Purposes. 1949. S rp 1135.Web <http://congressional.proquest.com/congcomp/getdoc?SERIAL-SET-ID=11294+S.rp.1135>.

This article focuses on development of drones for use of agricultural purposes. This goes along perfectly with my project because forestry and agricultural purposes go hand in hand. This article could give really great insight on what type of aircraft we should use for the unmanned section of this project and why. The pros are that the insight could be really helpful in my planning for this mission. 

Valavanis, Kimon P., and George J. Vachtsevanos. Handbook of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.Web.

This article is just the normal handbook of unmanned aerial vehicles. This article is just to review and stay sharp on the basics of unmanned aerial systems. It covers drone designs, ethics, and logistics. Pros about this article are that it includes all things drones and it is good to go back to the basics when doing projects like this. Cons are that it isn't too specific to the project we are working on. Again it's always good to to go back to basics and review to make sure all areas are covered for a project as complex as this. 

Singh, K. K., and A. E. Frazier. 2018. "A meta-analysis and review of unmanned aircraft system (UAS) imagery for terrestrial applications." International Journal of Remote Sensing 39 (15-16):5078-5098. doi: 10.1080/01431161.2017.1420941.

Grunn, Emanuel, and Anh Tuá̂n Phạm. Modeling of Complex Systems : Application to Aeronautical Dynamics. Automation-Control and Industrial Engineering Series. 

Gundlach, Jay, and American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Civil and Commercial Unmanned Aircraft Systems. Aiaa Education Series.

November 8th, 2018
Field Outing

Today for lab we decided to do some work at professor Hupy's house. As a class we focused on ground control points and mission planning. Professor Hupy needed some video and images of his yard while it was already marked by flags for some construction work he is doing, and we decided to take advantage of the already marked yard to collect data for him. The first thing we covered was forming the mission and deciding the path for the drone to fly, and specific camera angles that the gimbal would be set at. After deciding the path and specifics for the drone we put out 9 ground points to help collect more data for the flight. Professor Hupy taught us that we needed to spread out these points over the entire area of flight, and not focus them all in one area, or the data would be distorted and skewed. We were told to carefully take note of the order we placed the ground points at because in order to not mess up the data, we needed to pick them back up in opposite order from the way we placed them (see figures). After placing the ground control points we needed to properly calibrate the drone because the drones last flight was over 5 miles away from Hupy's house. Krysta Rolle was the pilot for the first mission, and I was in charge of helping her calibrate the H520 Yuneec drone. After calibration and proper setup we flew the mission as planned collecting data successfully!

The ground control points in order as placed:
1. By large oak tree in front yard
2. By pile of bricks
3. By the river
4. In the middle of the path back from river
5. By the log pile
6. Front yard by the cars
7. By the trampoline point
8. The only point across the street
9. Driveway checkpoint

GIS DAY
Nov 1, 2018

Schedule for GIS Day:
9:00 - 9:30 am Coffee Social & Poster Setup (STEW 206 & 214)
9:30 –10:00 am Lightning Talks (STEW 206)
10:00 –11:00 am Keynote: GIS for natural resources management at United Nation (STEW 206) Dr. Nicolas Picard, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations Live Stream
11:00am–12:20pm Presentations (STEW 206) Spatial Humanities: What is and What Can it Be. Prof. Sorin Adam Matei, Associate Dean of Research and Graduate Education, College of Liberal Arts Race and Spatial Humanities Prof. Kim Gallon, Assistant Professor of History Forest structural diversity as a predictor of ecosystem function in North America Dr. Elizabeth LaRue, Forestry and Natural Resources My laptop takes forever, now what! Eric Adams, ITaP Research Computing
12:20 –1:30 pm Career Lunch (STEW 279) (RSVP only)
1:30 – 2 pm Poster Presentations (STEW 214)
2:00 – 4:00 pm Round Table Discussions (STEW 214)

GIS day was a huge help in describing different GIS applications and teaching me what GIS is really all about. I learned different perspectives of GIS from a few different professional resources throughout the day, and thought about GIS in different ways than I have before. The keynote speaker Dr. Nicolas Picard had a very interesting take on GIS. At times it was a little hard to understand what he was talking about for a few reasons. First of all, he was very soft spoken and he wasn't utilizing his microphone, so it was difficult to hear him. Second, he had a difficult accent to understand. Third, he went into topics that were not common knowledge to the group listening and did not provide enough background information on some important key topics that he assumed we knew about. What I did like about Dr. Picard's talk was that he included slides that showed what lessons were learned from the different mistakes people made gathering and analyzing GIS data (See figures from GIS Day). The best topic that related to me with Dr. Picard's talk was when he covered using GIS to manage forest genetic resources. He spoke about how to define geographical marginality and how instead of using just one approach there should be multidimensional approaches to gathering this information. His emphasis for that segment was "GIS is a technical tool to address all dimensions of sustainable forest management" which he says makes it an essential tool for policy development to forest monitoring.
The next speaker that was one of my personal favorites was Professor Sorin Matei. He was taking GIS to the next level taking programs and research that had already been done and improving them with GIS technology. He talked about the Orbis Stanford project which is a geospatial network model of the Roman world. (http://orbis.stanford.edu/). There are other maps that show locations that model the Roman world but the Stanford project improved these other maps by giving information using GIS that would give the viewer "environmental constraints that governed the flow of people, goods, and information." He showed us that you can take maps and information that are already out there and improve them using GIS data.
Professor Kim Gallon had a very interesting Ethics view on GIS. She stated that GIS was numbing people to the fact that those figures and representations show did not properly capture what they really stood for. He examples included showing a GIS model of boats of slaves coming from Africa in the early 1800's to America, Central America, and South America. She stated that those little dots moving across the screen were taking away from what they each stood for because people have a hard time thinking about the facts that each of those dots represented a number of real human lives. She thinks that GIS is not the best way to interpreter all information because it destroys the ethics point of view for some viewers.
I think that these 3 talks were the all important for understanding GIS. These talks were the ones that peaked my interest the most, and were relate able to me. All GIS can relate to UAS work that we do. I think it is also important to not forget about the root of the information that GIS is portraying just like Professor Kim Gallon said. If we are using GIS to show data than we should be sure to properly label and identify all points of interest so that the viewer can truly see what we are trying to display for them. I think that Professor Sorin also had some great points, saying that it doesn't matter if the information already exists, it can be improved and expanded on even more, and we can do that with drones and the technology that we have. Even if a map is already made, drones can help with GIS information using ground points, and proper labeling to assist improving maps. I think that the keynote speaker Dr. Picard had good information on multi-disciplinary approaches showing that we can always take different approaches to get different or better results. I also enjoyed the fact that he showed were others could have improved on some GIS projects because learning from others mistakes can be useful!