Hello everyone.
Watching the sUAS Expo in San Francisco really got me thinking... we are at the beginning of a HUGE trend.
The consensus is that the number one application for Drone technology over the next few years will be Agriculture. More specifically: aerial mapping, NDVI vegetation analysis and multi spectral imaging.
This will most likely be the sector that will break social stigmas currently attached to 'drones', turning them from deadly killing machines into friendly farming tools comfortingly hovering over wheat fields.
Over the past couple of years I have seen incredible advances in 1). Affordable Open Source Drone Technology (pixhawk) 2). Affordable Sensor Technology (you can get light high resolution cameras off the shelf) and 3). Image Processing Software.
The problem I see is that for your average user, making sense of these individual products is daunting, even for those with more experience, integrating everything for efficient work flow is a major challenge.
As I see it there are 3 key components that need to be integrated:
How it should work:
The end goal is to produce valuable data in the form of images. These images help Farmer Joe make his next decision. The key is to get the hardware to talk to each other through seamless integration.
This is how I see the work-flow going...
1 – A survey grid is drawn using the flight planning software overlayed on Google maps.
2 – The drone takes off and moves to it's first waypoint in the survey grid via GPS signal.
3 – The done reaches it's waypoint and triggers the camera to take a picture of the area underneath.
4 – The onboard encrypted telemetry sends the image down to a laptop.
5 – The image processing software on the laptop starts stitching the images into a mosaic.
6 – This process repeats until the entire survey grid is completed, the drone lands and the stitched mosaic is automatically uploaded to the web-based application where the customer can analyze or share the image data in a 'Google earth' type interface.
What we have:
1 - We have a fantastic open source GPS enabled flight controller that is very powerful and fully programmable, thanks to 3DRobotics. The hardware only costs $279 with a GPS module and can already trigger cameras to take images and pre-defined waypoints.
This flight controller works with the powerful open source 'mission planner' which can do the first three points above. You can program missions using GPS waypoints and even generate survey grids.
2 - We also have low cost but high resolution cameras such as Sony cameras that offer remote API functionality: https://developer.sony.com/2013/11/29/how-to-develop-an-app-using-t...
3 - Finally we have access to free image stitching software or Image Composite Editors (ICE): http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/groups/ivm/ICE/
What needs to be done:
All the components are there, we just need to get them talking to each other. This means designing a web based program that translates their languages into one user friendly application.
The key being an emphasis on clean powerful yet simple work flow.
I can imagine a user having a log-in account where he can click on one of his fields and this brings up a Google earth type interface with the multi-spectral or NDVI images overlayed on top.
Take a look here to see what I mean: http://demo.terravion.com/#blocks
That particular company uses full scale aircraft however and are orders of magnitude more expensive.
What I really like is that you can select what overlay you want on the field be it infrared, NDVI or visual...
The closest I have seen to this idea is San Francisco based drone-deploy: http://dronedeploy.com/
I am sure many of us are also looking forward to 3DR robotics releasing "drone-share" although I could not find much info on that...
Ideally this should be integrated directly into the mission planner software. If we can get the telemetry to transmit live photos to the groundstation which can in turn perform real time image stitching and upload it to your account in the cloud for customers, then that would be a really powerful tool.
So I am looking for any input you have to offer, any current projects or programs that you think I should take a look at. What is the best way to start the development process?
This is a huge project with many challenges but even more potential. I am eager to hear what you think.
Best regards,
Jethro Hazelhurst.
Replies
My business has received a contract from the European Space Agency to work with a Remote Sensing company that will process imagery from Satellites and UAVs, then provide tiled RS imagery into a web based Precision Agriculture Mapping System that already provides Variable Rate Application maps using hisotrical data, such as Yield Maps and Soil Sampling maps. There are a few similar systems working in the UK that agronomists are using to create VRA maps for farmers to use, the key challenges are regulations / data formats & crop models.
Looking forward to seeing what 3DR will bring out in the next few weeks and if we're allowed to buy it, given the export restrictions that seem to have been put in place?
Hi Jethro,
it is great that you approach the technical side of things in such a methodical way. However, I think we should also look at the whole process: once your farmer has acquired his NDVI map of his crop, how should he interpret it? Is wheat different then maize in reflection, and what do the different values (shades) mean? Again, on this all the technique and knowledge is there, but I am assuming that, like I do not know about farming, farmers do not know about remote sensing.
I guess one of the services a company could provide would be educating farmers on how to read the data.
Perhaps even better would be a software solution that allows the farmer to log into his account and view his field as mentioned, only this time he he can click a button and annotation appears that helps him understand what he is seeing.
The annotation could be written there by a professional surveyor as part of the service... one of the benefits of being on the cloud.
But you are right, it is a science on it's own.
Jethro,
That's exactly right. We'll be releasing DroneShare in about two weeks. Then, in early Aug, we'll releasing the full mapping drones (copters and fixed wing) that have all the rest of what you've described. The only bit that they they don't do out of the box is the real-time wireless uploading of images, but that's what the DroneDeploy box adds.
In short: you'll be happy in just a matter of weeks!
Thank you for the information Chris. Very exciting times.
Flight Riot - are both good 'how to' guides
Dronemapper - does what it says.
Excellent, thank you Michael.
-
1
-
2
of 2 Next