Hi,
I couldn't resist to share the close-ups of our custom delivery of Pteryx PRO for AGROCOM Polska (precision agriculture consulting services).
This is most probably the only operational setup in the world that can do simultaneous mapping of both visible and full spectrum (including near IR) photos.
We have used mechanical triggering (scheduled automatically by the autopilot) that allows using different cameras with the same metal mount. The head is a part of Pteryx UAV and is made of kevlar+carbon fiber, it is also roll stabilised for guaranteed ground photo overlap.
Comments
Rory, I think you are right whe it comes to pixel accurate measurements. You could take Raw images and process the colours of the bayer pattern separately (CHDK enables Raw). Another problem is that the red filter of the bayer is too wide (meaning wavelength). When only looking for an estimate of NDVI on a huge scale, you could get happy with consumer cams, but we tried to correlate to ground data and it was hard... Thats one of the reasons we went for three black and white industrial cameras plus spectrometer (see the link before).
On the long run it´s getting hyperspectral. Then you can really go for nitrogen content and so on (and controlling fertilizer...). Drawback is that these systems are linescanners with all the fun coming with that :-(
True they did a serious research.
Somehow they ended exactly with 3 times larger TOW (14kg!) than the weight of the Pteryx shown with 70min batteries (they got 30+mins). But the sensor setup they used looks impressive. Clearly a research project, well conducted. Pity it didn't concluded with a commercial product, or did it?
Adler looks to be in the class of Penguin UAV or Aerosonde.
@Condor
The reason for double camera here is some redundancy at modest cost, plus the demonstration of a clean visible image and 'analytic' data at once, I would say for marketing reasons (client's choice).
We have found that in practice the weakest link in the Pteryx chain starts to be potentially disastrous parachute folding skill and camera reliability, because we have simply ironed out most of other problems.
Rory, you will always have the problem of alignment when using two ore more cameras. Even when aligned perfectly AND triggered in parallel the distance of the lenses will contribute... You will eather have to align the image pairs or do the calculation of orthophots for each channel and combine the results (what I prefer, you want that result in the end anyway).
And sorry Krzysztof, but you are actually some years late to be the first with this one... I personally know or have participated in more than 5 groups doing VIS/NIR mapping for farm applications, probably not all operational in your definition, but successful :-)
One is this: http://paparazzi.enac.fr/wiki/Adler_Uni_Stuttgart , where you also can see an example (CIR-Image).
And there are many moe around (google for: UAV NDVI)
T tail gives some extra pitch stability if I understand well, and most of all is landing protection. Also the elevator is one piece what makes faster assembly.
BTW if we talk about control EFFECTIVENESS, by sheer force acting on tail, being in the wake helps as it has force even with null airspeed. Not saying you would want this effectiveness after severe stall.
"Then you could probably get two photos taken at exactly same time with same parameters."
In practice occasional 0.5s jitter remains even in manual mode. So purely theoretical feature.
OK maybe you can shave 0.2s of it. But the key point is, there is NO REASON to have perfect synchronisation. You always compare the results after stitching, otherwise you have thousands of them.
The main reason of double camera is that you get:
1. good warranty one of the cameras actually worked (battery, SD card, clean lenses)
2. have visual and IR from the same area and the same time of day etc.
I found this site which converts stock canon cameras etc to IR and other bands.
http://www.maxmax.com
Those are Agrocom's cameras and they will have to decide what to reveal, not sure if they will go public. It is too early to speculate yet
The camera was modified by renowned Polish IR photographer that is working for us.
But you can get similarly modified cameras on ebay also (much cheaper).
Very cool! Can we see a sample picture from IR and non-IR?
Where did you get the lens/optics changed?
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