I'm a survey student who is testing some realy great things here. One project is to put a digital camera on an air-born platform(plane, blimp or rotory craft) and take suvey images and video. I've never built an aircraft before so I need lots of help and any advice is greatly appreciated. Anyone who would like to be involved in the project is welcome to send me an email. Thanks.
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Me and my professor are trying to do the same thing but we are trying to use a platform with vertical takeoff abilities. We want to be able to map the changes of the MHWL in Florida. how is your project coming along?
I am sure you have had a look at the BlimpDuino, T3-4 contest and the various autopilos available/talked about here on DIYDrones. Can you be more spesific about what particurlar part of the problem related to aerial surveying you want help with?
Regards,
brakar
The real challenge for using aerial platforms (affordable ones) is to solve the problem of image distortion introduced by roll, pitch and yaw. You could make an entire project of just solving this aspect of the problem. I suggest you get yourself a low cost rc trainer and start learning the skills required there (you can slap in a cheap digital camera and take some images to keep it interesting) . Then progress to the autopilot and its integration. If you ave not already get yourself ArcGIS and start learning how to work with large raster files.
You can get some really good resolution imagery with relatively low outlay however the trick becomes how to scale the capability to larger projects and maintain accuracy. You can pretty much count on every image you take being distorted unless you work on a stabilized platform and even then its just "less distorted".
If I was you I would be less interested in taking on the platform aspect of the solution, yes its sexy but the real challenge is making the imagery useful.
Feel free to PM me.
Good luck.
C.