Since this was done mostly for the cameras (which can't tell the difference between autonomous and RC flight), we didn't really push the UAV envelope very far. I put the Lego UAV in autonomous mode for a minute, and I saw Adam with his hands off the controller for a while as the heli maintained position beautifully. I had the PicoPilot UAV there, but we didn't have time to fly it. And on a sad note, I totalled the Predator, which was an accident waiting to happen due to the terrible flying characteristics of the V-tail-only version. (I've now migrated the electronics to the second Predator, which has ailerons and should be much more controllable).
Most of the day was spent on optics and mapping of various sorts. The PictEarth guys showed their fantastic software that generates KML files in real time, with just a cellphone and a Bluetooth GPS sensor. Here's an example of what they demonstrated (you need Google Earth to display this).
I was testing my auto-stabilized camera mount and GPS tracker, and I must say they did better than expected. Here's some examples:
A GPS track of one test flight:
And here's the same mosaic composited against the relevant spot on Google Earth (sorry about the white part; I need to figure out how to hide that):
Finally, here's an example of the quality we get from each shot (click for a full-rez version). We're not quite at license plate-reading quality, but that's not bad for a six megapixel. When we swap in a ten megapixel I think we'll be there--at this point the airframe, stabilization system and camera mounts work great and it's simply a matter of using the best camera for the job.
Comments
The Pict earth app looks pretty sweet in its "playback". Great photos all.
I still haven’t had time to process my photo’s as I’m all over the Burning Man mission like a cheep suit!