Almost a year ago we had the chance to present one of the most magical uses of drones at SEAC 2014 Materiality of the sky. Combining Photogrammetry from small UAS, Surveying, Sky-Celestial body Simulators and Archaeoastronomy we managed to calculate the exact age and day that an ancient temple was build.

"Mapping of the Christian Churches in Medieval City of Rhodes Island. A new perspective of the orientation with the use of a Remote Sensing Unmanned Aerial System (UAS)"

Images from left to right: A. 3D Temple model injected to Starry Night simulator, temples were aligned mostly close to equinoxes or close to the patron saint day.  B. Othophoto map by UAS imagery. C. 3D Church model with highlighted azimuth measurment samples.

After that, we were immerged to a hole new world, crying out to be discovered by new methods, payloads, flying platforms, GIS analysis and more! Most important, Drones led us to discover our heritage, learn and study history
among the bits and bytes we dig in all day. 

As 3DR Distros, we are closely connected with Academia and we offer complete systems or developement parts to universities and research institutions. That relationship along with the active scolars within of our team, gave us the chance to participate  in a wonderfull summer school for "DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES IN CULTURAL HERITAGE & TOURISM" .  which took place at the mythical Delfi.  

Participants had the opportunity to meet numerus state of the art technologies and multidisciplinary methods. From our behalf, we had the opportunity to present the usage and countless possibilities of UAS photogrammetry. 

We found that, the best tool to immerse scientist like archaeologists in UAS Photogrammetry, was the new 3DR SOLO, because it combines everything an UAS must have, in an unbeatable form factor and easy of use. SOLO as a "smart tool" can help a student to identify every UAS component like motors, payload, ground station, telemetry etc. by just opening a back pack. Furthermore individual 3DR components and UcanDrone airframes were used to emphasise that researchers and scholars can easily design and build their own aerial platform based on their needs.

We will be happy to share any tips and tricks, we used for the implementation of UAS tech, to similar projects.

we would like to express our sincere thanks to: 

Prof. Ioannis Liritzis, Lab of Archaeometry, University of the Aegean for the invitation, leadreship, hospitality and organization.
Prof. John N. Hatzopoulos, Dept of Environment, University of the Aegean for his guidance, support and innovation spirit all these years as my mentor.

Dr Anestis Koutsoudis, ATHENA-Research and Innovation Center in Information, Communication and Knowledge Technologies and Prof. Thomas Levy, University of California, San Diego, Qualcomm, USA, with their teams, for the inspiring cooperation and sharing knowledge and experiences.

Finally Dr. Helen Vassiliou, University of the Aegean for her long friendship, support and initiation in the facinating world of archaeoastronomy.

Thanks for reading,

Dimitris (James) Stefanakis,

UcanDrone CEO

Welcome,

UcanDrone, founded on January 2013, is specialized in the area of UAV and remote airmodelling, in the meaning of design, construction and flight of the airplane models. Working as a team for many years with great experience of applied research in the field of geographic information systems, development of forestry maps and aerial photography, motivated us to deal professionally with the field of UAV's and more specific Civil Applications.

Since the very beginning, our research included several tests of automated flight control systems, until the introduction of Ardupilot first generation. It was very clear for us that there was the beginning of a new philosophy in the design of the automated flight control systems. In this context we wish to inform and get closer to the people, scientists or professionals, who are interested in this field, the CIVIL UAV's technology, which will make easier and enrich artistically their science or their profession as well as their hobby.

We hope, that scientists, students, professionals and of course hobbyists will find a great variety of services and products.

Main fields: 

• Forestry
• Precision Agriculture
• Tailor made UAS
• Remote Sensing
• Environment
• UAS components

We are proud to be part of the evolving DIYDrone’s community and recently 3DR Distributors.

We would like to thank:
-3DRobotics, for their confidence, support and guidance.
-All the users and costumers that supported us to our first steps.
-Dave Buckley, for his beautiful Arduplane/copter illustrations

For info, suggestions and quotes please email us at info@ucandrone.com

With Regards,

for UcanDrone

Dimitrios Stefanakis (James) 

Follow up from my recent post : 

Arduplane goes to ASPRS

A Great week for all attendants and a glorious 2day for all DIYDrones members and APM users & Devs!!

With glad, i realized that a great amount of US and EU researchers use APM for their work, combine & exchange knowledge and as a super active community members involve rapidly  at their expertizes. 

I was one of the lucky who followed the UAS fundamentals workshop, attended all the wonderfull thinks that photogrammetry and remote sensing geniuses were up to and watch what market leaders had to display, as well as presenting our efforts of creating a UAS for precision agriculture!

A brief trend overveiw

-Market : Computer Vision, LIDAR, cloud photogrammetry computing

-Papers & Posters: Agriculture, Open Source, LIDAR, Remote Sensing of Land Applications, Disaster Management and Rapid Response

-Popular Topics: Vegetation, Automation, LIDAR, UAS/UAV

-Popular debates: Image point cloud vs LIDAR

-VERY popular discussions: FAA.....

There was a dedicated

Special Session: UAS Capabilities Overview, with a great overveiw of the UAS potentuals and a long discussion for there integration at US airspace "system" by FAA. I understud the conserns and problems, but since iam not US citizen, neither fly at, i wont express my opinnion, but i think its usefull to inform you that there is a major consultation with  FAA to overcome any issues.

Heres a quick video with our paper presentaion

If you can tolerate gopro's mic and my terrible english here is the full presentation 

I want to thank

-Every fellow that i ve met at the conference and encouraged our work, i wish them the best,

-All DIYD members for their support, 

And last but not least, my friends and colleagues at UcanDrone Team  

If you missed the conference and you were intersted at a topic here is the final program if you want to find somebody.

For those who dont know ASPRS, is The American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. 

On their 2013 Annual conference call for abstracts, gladly they included Unmanned Aerial Vehicles!!

And here we go! After almost  3 years of developing, breaking, breaking... and more breaking.. we managed to succesfully build a rig to fullfil our needs and also, translate hundreds of Precision Agriculture formulas and models to GIS-Automated rutines!

This extraordinary alchemy of UAS construction, GIS, Agriculture and Aerial Mapping, will be presented as a paper at 3:30 pm to 5:00 pm, Wednesday, March 27th  in the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles session. The Conference will take place at Baltimore, Maryland USA -  Baltimore Marriott Waterfront Hotel.

Creation of a Remote Sensing Unmanned Aerial System
(UAS) for Precision Agriculture and Related Mapping
Applications
Dimitrios Stefanakis(Me), University of the Aegean, Greece
John Hatzopoulos, Margaris Nikolaos, and Danalatos Nikolaos

Abstract:

Our goal is to create a fully autonomous airborne remote sensing platform, for the production of various vegetation indices to determine growth, development, yield crop and provide considerable information in real time and at low cost (compared with existing methods) for the study area.

The primary tool for extraction and production of the information is an unmanned aerial system (UAS) that carries sensors and cameras flying over the study area, transmitting real time data that has been programmed to collect. The collected data is land cover, geographic location, weather data, geomorphologic and cadastral data, ortho-corrected derivatives and qualitative data type coverage, biomass and other parameters that have been introduced to the platform via computational GIS routines.

This idea emerged during the analysis of the functional ecology in Greek agro-ecosystems within spatial information and mapping. To take full advantage of dynamic tools of IT, such as Geographic Information Systems and Expert Systems, Global Positioning Systems, Remote Sensing and Agriculture Engineering tools.

The platform named "Skiptrovamon" has numerous applications and is used as a tool in many scientific fields, such as; precision agriculture, geography, geomorphology, topography, urban geography, and remote sensing.

Skiptrovamon was designed and has been tested as remote sensing platform for precision agriculture. As the aircraft flies over the study area it collects information from cropland and outputs, yield crop, current biomass, indicate the stressed plants and possible lack or adequate irrigation and fertilization in real time through computational routines.

Key words: UAS, UAV, Skiptrovamon, agriculture, remote sensing, GIS

We would never be able to do anything, if APM, and this communtity didnt provide us the tools!! 

Once again, i need your backup!  if you are arround i definetly need a supportive audience and also meet some of you in person (Living in Greece doesnt make meetings easy :) ). 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We would like to thank, UcanDrone Team: Nikos G Gerarchakis, Major of Hellenic Army Corps of Engineers, Apostolos Gadetsakis, Senior Officer Telecommunications Engineer of the Hellenic Air Force and Stefanos Nasos, Sail plane pilot, Test pilot of the Team, for providing us the tools to construct and test the prototype aircrafts of this study.

We owe a great thanks to DIYDrones.com community and APM developers team, for providing certain solutions to our needs, free software and helping us thru the integration process.

More info, for the Construction, Paper etc, will follow after the presentation!

Hi all,

Iam following APM since 1280, for remote sensing purposes. finally i used my two latest platforms ( Skiptrovamon & Bixler 2 and ground station for a full scale mission.  

i have had-like many fellows from DIYdrones - a great success with AP from APM, but the think that made me really excited was the real plug n play performance.  i just connected everything on APM2 and Bixler, load the param file from wiki and threw it on the sky! the latest code recognized all my new gear automaticaly (solderd onboard GPS, external ublox, RFD900) and Mission planner UI guided me throu a 5min setup.

No tuning! nor Balancing for the extra GoPro, nothing!   I just flew for 5-7 minutes for the auto declination do its magic and then switched to Auto!

if you are a new comer searching for a cheap trusty platform and for a super DIY autopilot you are in the right place!!   

cheers

James

Continuing from my last post and hunting down the ever ending dream for "more" Skiptrovamon took a new form. This time our team goals was to keep the good things from our first airframe and..:

-Step on Known PIDs

-Make more room for cameras and FPV gear

-increase lift and decrease wing loading

-Follow DIYDRONES hardware update

-More movement-servo accuracy

-More endurance

-Eliminate image post processing

The results: 

At the current state you see this model on the below pictures, the wingspan is 2 meters and the weight is 700 gramms (24,5 ounches). Front fuselage is built up by styrofoam sheets , "boom" is built with balsa using some styrofoam frames, tail system is also styro sheets with small reinforcements and the wing is made out of white 25 Kg/cub.m. EPS foam reinforced of course as needed. The wing is also folding in the middle for easy transporation...

like Skiptrovamon I, our next model is sheeted with 1mm carbon fiber: 

Pros:

-As you can see is much like a 2 meter skywalker, so ready made PIDs both for APM1 and APM2 work great.

-with 4s 2600mah we achieved 40 minutes flight time. 

-All up weight is 2,1 kg, incl. Cameras, APM, and FPV gear witch means it has less than 40gr/sdm wing loading!!

-Super steady even with 12,5m/s wind gusts

- 17km/h Stall speed!

- New digital high tourqe servos, consume less Amps (1,2a) and  give super precise movement

- APM will keep us up to date for a time

- Mission Planner wms and georeference tool, provides us a 20cm accurasy for calculations and stiching methods.Also i can export our results to both world or local Datum. 10000 thanks Michael. 

- For first time we can use geniuses like Penman for Spatial focal or even global computations instead of local.

Cons:

-Even if its steady, and noise free, camera is triggered with a 9gr servo and without stabilization we have two issues:

A. Computer rutines must compute Omega Phi Kappa, witch means we need a powerfull ground station and expensive software like Erdas

B. everything described to this wonderfull post  and all the comments on wiki

-Manually i can bind image acquisition with log files but as i mentioned before, a text file with pitch, roll, yaw, baro and Nmea from the click moment  could make orthorectification completely auto. maybe a guide to transform log files to excel sheets could help

- Please someone clarify on the wiki if we can use our old GPS with APM2, beacause everything is inside fuselage now

Thank everyone working to this community for making dreams happen

James 

I attach a setup senario for APM2  and iam waiting any comments if you spot some errors or suggetions to improve it. electrosetup.pdf

Hi everyone,

For years now we use model aircrafts as a hobby or job, and for many years  as aerial platforms for aerial photography and mapping. So after many discussions here and reading, I will begin here an UAV application that I think and prepare from student and I hope that now I have the background to make it happen. The reason I post the project here is because I learned all about model aircraft from aeromodelling.gr and everything I know for autopilots from diydrones.com

I began my first efforts for knowledge and hobby with the famous Telemachus (similar to telemasters).  The Telemasters are well known to most of you and they have been used as such platforms, although satisfactory results have pluses and minuses that we saw in corresponding topics. So after studying, planning and design of many commercial and non-commercial UAV’s, i resulted in the formation of one new platform that meets ALL of my conditions: 

• Be able to lift all the flight equipment, control, transmission, cartography, FPV
• Have a decent flight time (~ 20-25 minutes)
• Have a great airspeed spectrum (cruise speed 30km/h, 70km/h max, stall 20-25km/h)
• Flight stability (dihedral 5-6 degrees)
• space and protection for all equipment
• Wingspan MAX! 1.90 m
• Detachable wings and body for easy transport
• Rigid and durable construction
• Servo on the moving parts for easy changing, maintenance, replacement
• For sure electric powered  

Finally anything else you suggest...

And we begin:

1. Uploaded with ImageShack.us
2. Wings are a joint design by the famous Skywalker, the predator RQ-11, an israely Twin-boom (I did not find the name) and some personal touches weight ~ 400gr 

2. Equipment detail

• Battery 250-500g 3s and 4s from 3000-5000 mah
• Futaba 8fg transmitter
• Receiver Futaba 20gr 2,4 8ch
• ESC  GAUI 66Amps 60gr
• Servo 4x12gr digital
• Ardupilot mega for avionics
• 900mhz xbee pro telemetry kit
• transmitter for fpv 5,8 Ghz 200mw ~ 50gr
• camera 10 gr for FPV in the nose without PAN-TITL
• mapping Camera in the belly with pan-roll-stabilization-target tracking 200 gr (I need tons of help with that)
• Target tracking mount 90gr (with Servos)
• 2 camera 6-10 gr at the wingtips for 3d image acquisition
• 136gr Scorpion bl motor SII-3014-1220

3. fuselage,

After much thought for the space, size, versatility, the total weight, I decided to give to my plane a “Stick” form, ie a square carbon fiber of 1,5cm witch all equipment, (wings, rudders etc) will be screwed on it and can change position depending on the setup and CG. The aerodynamic "outfit" will be left out as a surprise at the end of construction, the only hint is that the total weight of the planking will not exceed for 1 meter aircraft 60gr and it will be practically unbreakable! 

4. horizontal and vertical stabs are in shape and size same with those of the skywalker, but is made ​​of balsa & depron (6mm) with normal layout (not T-Tail) and the servos are mounted on them 

Everything is screwed! Because a.  I do not want even traces of glue, and b. the weight. Also I will be literally be able to unscrew everything and put it in a Bag. 

5. Finally, all data from the cameras (dual 640 * 480 3d, RG NIR) will united directly to the base station in a GIS environment, ArcGIS, there the data will be fed into an algorithm that can calculate the terrain, the sunshine and hence the potential evapotranspiration (pennman), various health indices (NDVI, RVI, etc.), leading to immediate conclusions about the course of cultivation.

A little backround,

I am from Athens- Greece, I work as GIS technician for cadastral agencies and forest mapping cartography, I studied agriculture technology and environment management. The whole project has to do with my phd witch I hope to combine spatial data, agriculture techniks and knowledge with remote sensing and the calculation capabilities of GIS.

I purchased a full ardupilot mega kit from udrones ready and tested, I used it to fly right out of the box my custom made telemaster (img below)with perfect results, but I needed something more, so I am building my own airframe, I update my APM’s firmware and now I need some help to make it come to life.

I hope that are many people in this forum that we share the same interests (and passions) and I believe this could be a nice post-think tank to gather all opinions for remote sensing applications. Also I am willing to help everyone who wants to know more about photogrametry and GIS issues, image rectification and so on.

At this point I have to thanks, my employer Silva- Natura , www.greekwings.gr for providing cnc machinery and knowledge for the wing construction and www.nemhobby.com for sponsoring most of my rc gear. 

Thanks in advance,

James Stefanakis