Could someone tell me his experirence in agricultural or surface mapping and wath are the best UAVS for this purpose considering fixed wings or multirotors copters?
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Could someone tell me his experirence in agricultural or surface mapping and wath are the best UAVS for this purpose considering fixed wings or multirotors copters?
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The environment can impose restrictions on the type of aircraft you can or should use. Fixed wings require landing areas and I found that testing the things is more difficult in some hilly countries with little infrastructure than countries that have a lot of infrastructure and proper access roads and where most of the country is already 'developed'. The reason why fixed wings are usually recommended is because they (used to) have longer flight times. I'm working on a long endurance multirotor for mapping purposes which should eventually be able to achieve 30+ minutes with payload. That should be enough to cover 600mx600m at least. I'm not sure if you'd want to fly out further from LOS than that or cover areas in batches.
The benefits of multirotors are that you can hit a panic button and it'll stabilize in the air, allowing time to figure out what to do next. Planes always have forward velocity, so your ability to deal with situations in panic situations is limited. Planes need a relatively large, free area for testing. Multirotors can do some of the basic testing in your backyard. Fixed wings require a turning circle to steer away from danger, whereas multirotors at low velocity will have stopped in 1.5m.
Fixed wings are more difficult and take more iterations to tune for their flight characteristics in different conditions, because their control loops have parameters that are related. Multirotors in a basic flight mode (stabilize only), once stabilized have other tuning loops that do not interfere with the basic stabilization condition, so there should be less iterations.
Although multirotors are more subject to windy conditions, fixed wings are subject to rolling and require control surfaces to compensate. Therefore, attitude control for multirotors is much faster and precise than fixed wings, so in strong wind gusts there's a lower chance that images end up shaken.
If you're a beginner, I'd start out with a multirotor and if you feel the need to cover larger areas in one go, upgrade to a plane. If you already have R/C model experience, feel free to start out with a plane immediately.
The ecosynth guys recently used a multirotor on a tower in Costa Rica in the middle of a forest:
http://ecosynth.org/profiles/blogs/costa-rica-july-2013-day-one-lan...
Try covering that area with a fixed wing :).
As I said, I think it's the environment imposing the restriction. If I were to fly in Holland over flat country without too many obstacles, a plane would be a good choice. If this were in the middle of the Amazon or in hilly country with electricity masts and poor access roads and little good area to make landings, I'd go for a multirotor instead.
Hi Daniel,
I have complete solution here, in São Paulo, Brazil.
If you want, just make contact.
www.ecodrones.com.br
Thanks!
this is my experience
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXjkAkjDhzY&feature=c4-overview...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4zOvW3tTRM&feature=c4-overview...
Hi Daniel... I think your best bet is a fixed wing due to the area that needs to be covered.. also fixed wings do a lot better in strong wind since they are like knives cutting through the air. A multicopter typically has a pretty large cross wind profile and gets pushed around quite a bit.. and also can't cover the same area.
With a fixed wing you can do around 600 acres in 30 min.
My experience is with agriculture remote sensing.. which has resulted in a work in progress software tool called AgPixel.
What sort of things are you looking to do?
It completely depends on the size of areas you are interested in mapping and your altitude restrictions. Can you shed some light on those requirements?