You guys build your own UAVs from scratch. Amazing. I've seen some of your UAV pics and vids on this site and they're all pretty impressive. I am curious though----once your UAV is built, what do you do with it? Do you just fly it around for fun? What are your UAV's applications (if any) beyond that? For example, could you use your UAV for specific tasks, chores, missions, etc?
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How close is the technology getting to realistically get set up with a couple of RC planes with programmable (with lat/long coordinates) that will transmit video back to the ground?
I'm a non-technical adult involved with a Civil Air Patrol group with a nice critical mass of cadets that will be around for 4-5 more years, and we're thinking about getting them into RC planes. So I'm brainstorming and I'm wondering how outside the realm of possibilities it would be (in a couple of years) to be able to help on ground searches with a plane equipped for such a mission.
I'm assuming that each plane equipped to have us get up in the air and then set it off to fly to certain waypoints and transmit video back would be prohibitively expensive now. I'm guessing that they'd be about $1,500 a piece, and with training/certifying involving some non-simulator crashes, we'd have to wait for the price to drop.
I realize there would be several regulatory/organizational hurdles as well.
As Chris points out ... the defining characteristics of platforms such as the geocrawlers is their relatively inexpensive, anytime, anywhere access to the sky to do basic remote sensing. Until very recently, acquiring 'fresh' imagery over a localized target area has been prohibitively expensive for all but very few applications (read DOD/DHS).
What we are doing is not so different from any other kind of remote sensing ... except that 'we' are doing this remote sensing ourselves and are not reliant on NASA, Sanborn, DigitalGlobe, Google, Microsoft, General Atomics etc for our imagery.
The strange thing is that we as 'amateurs' are often contacted by the very same military contractors ... http://www.flickr.com/photos/ortelius/sets/72157605546626016/ ... who are (also?) putting sophisticated autonomous platforms up, but don't think of anything more than a 640x480 vidcam in the air, and wonder 'how to put their imagery on a map' ... Seems like a clear case of cart before horse.
one of the objects of my basic-x project is the ability to detect and utilize natural sources of energy in order to sustain flight .other then that i don't even have a camera in it I am mostly interested in researching my ideas about using AI in flight rather then just point to point navigation and pretty pictures .
For me, just aerial mapping to create high-resolution overlays on Google Maps (that's why I call them "geocrawlers" -- they can "crawl" physical space in an automated way the way Google crawls the web).
It's cheap "anywhere, anytime" access to the aerial imagery.
Others use it for real-time video, although all the usual civilian applications, from search and rescue to disaster relief, tend to require regulatory approval.
Replies
How close is the technology getting to realistically get set up with a couple of RC planes with programmable (with lat/long coordinates) that will transmit video back to the ground?
I'm a non-technical adult involved with a Civil Air Patrol group with a nice critical mass of cadets that will be around for 4-5 more years, and we're thinking about getting them into RC planes. So I'm brainstorming and I'm wondering how outside the realm of possibilities it would be (in a couple of years) to be able to help on ground searches with a plane equipped for such a mission.
I'm assuming that each plane equipped to have us get up in the air and then set it off to fly to certain waypoints and transmit video back would be prohibitively expensive now. I'm guessing that they'd be about $1,500 a piece, and with training/certifying involving some non-simulator crashes, we'd have to wait for the price to drop.
I realize there would be several regulatory/organizational hurdles as well.
I'm curious to hear your thoughts.
Thanks
From the raw imagery that is shot from our platforms ... http://strabo.pictearth.com/missions/ ... We can produce mosaics http://openaerialmap.org/datasource/ ... which can be used for various types of visual analysis of phenomena that occur in the imagery.
As Chris points out ... the defining characteristics of platforms such as the geocrawlers is their relatively inexpensive, anytime, anywhere access to the sky to do basic remote sensing. Until very recently, acquiring 'fresh' imagery over a localized target area has been prohibitively expensive for all but very few applications (read DOD/DHS).
What we are doing is not so different from any other kind of remote sensing ... except that 'we' are doing this remote sensing ourselves and are not reliant on NASA, Sanborn, DigitalGlobe, Google, Microsoft, General Atomics etc for our imagery.
Check out our (Pict'Earth) presentation from Where 2.0 ... http://en.oreilly.com/where2008/public/schedule/detail/1688
A PDF presentation is available here ... http://en.oreilly.com/where2008/public/asset/attachment/2591
The strange thing is that we as 'amateurs' are often contacted by the very same military contractors ... http://www.flickr.com/photos/ortelius/sets/72157605546626016/ ... who are (also?) putting sophisticated autonomous platforms up, but don't think of anything more than a 640x480 vidcam in the air, and wonder 'how to put their imagery on a map' ... Seems like a clear case of cart before horse.
It's cheap "anywhere, anytime" access to the aerial imagery.
Others use it for real-time video, although all the usual civilian applications, from search and rescue to disaster relief, tend to require regulatory approval.