Hey everybody,
I'm an Electrical Engineering student at The Ohio State University and I will be going to Ghana this summer for 3 weeks with a City & Regional Planning group. The area we are going to has pretty bad aerial photographs on Google Earth and ArcGIS, and they currently have one road map for the whole region which isn't very accurate or detailed at all. I have until June to build a drone or something to get these aerial photographs once I'm there, and I'm just wondering what people think would be the best design for this? I was also considering a helium balloon and kites, but I'd also very much enjoy a project like a quadrotor or something, just as long as it can climb high enough for good aerial photos.
All help is much appreciated!
Best,
Adam
Replies
In addition to whatever you decide to do with aerial imagery, I'd recommend just bringing a hand-held GPS unit that you have on whenever you're driving around the city. Then (when you get back?) upload that to Open Street Map and trace the roads. This will give future people who go there a leg up over what you had. If you want to go to the next level, have the locals write down the names of the roads for you as you're driving along.
I'm currently volunteering in Bolivia, and I've done that for my city and a couple surrounding towns, and it has been a great help to other volunteers as well as the (increasingly large) computer literate population.
Buy a standard RC plane, a Blixer perhaps and mount a Canon camera, one that can use CHDK to allow the camera to take high shutter speed interval images on it and then fly.
IMHO you don't have enough time to teach yourself UAS before going live.
This method will garner results.
Also its just a model plane that you are taking for fun. Leaving the USA with a "drone" could cause you issues, also entering an African country with a drone if they choose to see it that way would certainly cause you issues.
Post production is what its all about, have a look at Grassroots mapping.