Capstone AT419 Strategy Session
11/20/18

The first strategy session for our AT419 capstone class was held on Tuesday the 11th of November, 2018. For this session we wanted to figure out a few key elements of what the next semester would look like. We wanted to figure out what we were doing for this project, where we would do it, and start formulating what roles each member would have.
We discussed a few different options of where we are planning on doing our project. We talking about the Lafayette Amphitheater, and the Coyote Crossing Golf Club as two possible options for our location. We discussed possibly doing both of these locations and comparing our results. The majority of the class agreed the Lafayette Amphitheater should be the main focus because it includes multiple areas of interest and different terrain in one close area including: forest areas, fields, rivers, the amphitheater, and the parking lot around the amphitheater.
The proposed title of this project is "Understanding Key UAS fundamentals through Applied Research". The classed discussed different research that we could do at the park. We discussed some things we would like to possible do regarding data collection and analysis. Many of us were interested in flooding data and comparing the water levels around the area. The amphitheater is a great area for that because there are different elevations in the area which helps with this data collection. We discussed making a 3D model of the amphitheater itself which could be very interesting and unique. For this project we are looking for different sub-projects that will be helpful to the paper we want to right about applied research. Anything along the lines of data collection and using that data collection will help this paper be a success.
The hardest part of this discussion was figuring out what rolls each member of the class wanted to take. To start this process we discussed the a few essential skills we would like to learn or improve that we could make rolls out of. The 4 we decided on as a class were: management, Flight operations, Platform Maintenance, and Research literature/published writing skills. From those skills we started brainstorming about rolls or how we would all fit into rolls. We decided that we should each have a primary roll that most likely wouldn't rotate around, a secondary roll, which would rotate, and possibly 2 other minor rolls. This way the person in the primary roll would be able to teach others that were rotating into that roll, and the whole group wouldn't need to relearn everything each time we rotated jobs. The only exceptions that will not fit into the workflow would be management. There will only be one project manager and one operations manager at a time, and the operations manager will not rotate. That was all we had time for in that class period, but we met up outside of class at a restaurant with a professional setting, called the Stacked Pickled. As a group we talked about our main roles that we wanted. I wanted to get experience in management because it's what I am passionate about. I have taken on the roll of project manager. My roll is to make sure that all other rolls are working well together in a timely fashion and report that information back to Professor Hupy. I will be in charge of making some dead lines for deliverables and overseeing that work gets done when it was suppose to be. Our other manager will be Kyle who is taking the role of Operation Manager. He will be in charge of scheduling people to gather data and deciding who flies what drone with what payload. Dylan will be taking control of our ground control team which does everything involving set up and continuous monitoring of ground control. Ryan and Ian are our payload integrator/system integration specialist. They will be in charge of properly fitting payloads to specific drones and having the knowledge to teach others how to do so as well. They is also in charge of making sure drones and payloads are ready for each flight and that drones are stored correctly after every flight. Todd is the lead flight engineer. This means that he will make sure to take thorough notes on how each drone works and functions, including setup, preflight, and monitoring during flight. He will need to know how to teach others how to use specific drones who have no experience with those drones. Krysta is our lead author on the project. She will be in charge of writing the paper, editing the paper, and helping format and edit any other deliverables that are brought together from the group. As a team, if everyone functions properly and as a group, we will be sure to succeed on this project. I personally am excited to be working with such a driven group of peers who are committed and excited about a project like this one.

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!

McCormick Woods Lab

In class on October 23rd 2018, we were told to meet at McCormick Woods to run missions on communications. We used the orange Unity Drone to complete these missions. When we arrived Evan Hockridge was put in charge of the communications for this flight. Communication for this flight became a little more difficult because the area we were covering was over a very large wooden area. This made keeping visual line of sight difficult for the group. In order to keep visual line of sight for the mission at all times, two groups spread out over the golf course next to the woods and visual line of sight was handed off over the wallkie talkies. It was vital to the integrity of the mission that communication between the flight crew and visual observers was constant and clear. The team did a wonderful job making call outs such as "Drone is in sight for observer crew 1," or "Flight crew has line of sight of the drone." The missions were successful and safe thanks to the great communications between the flight crew and both visual observer teams.

Update: We flew a similar mission at McCormick Woods earlier this week on October 29th 2018. We learned that these missions were being flown to collect data on tree species. The goal was to take video and imagery we RBG cameras in hope to be able to identify the species of trees below using color change. Again, communication was the main part of the lab for most members. We ensured safe flight and operations using procedures that we developed ourselves that seem to fit this mission.

Open Source GIS Lab

Introduction

* What is GIS? That is, is it just software. What did Dr. Christina Hupy stress when she spoke about what defines what exactly constitutes GIS?
We all know that GIS is opensource software that helps us analyse and view geographical data. What Christina Hupy stressed was that you can't just plug in data and expect results, but that you have to manipulate the data so that the viewer can see what you want them to see. You must label things clearly to show the viewer what type of spacial data you are trying to interpret.
* What makes open source GIS (QGIS) different than proprietary (ESRI) GIS?
The main difference is that for proprietary software you need to buy and own the program, but for open source software you can use it for any software the supports it. Open source code is also shared between many people that can be adjusted as well with specific permissions while proprietary software you cannot change the code.
* What are advantages and disadvantages between the two?
Pros for opensource include getting help from a huge community on forums for problems, where the proprietary you can get tech support directly from the company. Also with open source it has less buggy coding because it is tested more frequently from many different people. Open source can branch off in different directions depending on where people want to take it and proprietary cannot.
* Why is Open Source GIS important to the UAS industry? That is, speculate upon your own experiences and goals to relate how this software could open doors and markets where proprietary GIS keeps doors closed.
The UAS industry is still very new. It is growing quickly and the application for drones are endless. Open source is very useful for new applications because it is easily adjusted to the users needs. Open source software can grow with the users and communities, where as a proprietary software is set when finished and will need completely new updates to catch up with the growing industry. That is why open source GIS will probably be used more in the UAS field than proprietary GIS.

Conclusions
* Draw upon the previous lab and compare your experience between Arc Desktop and QGIS.
Both were similar in some ways and very different in others. Arc Desktop was better for map making, but I felt like QGIS had more to offer in displaying and viewing data. QGIS had more to offer with different extensions and plug ins that were created by the community with a broader spectrum of use, where Arc Desktop seem to specialize on specific areas of view spatial data.
Both QGIS and Arc Desktop were good for their own reasons, but I think I prefer QGIS because it is open source, and I have more experience with open source software.