Welcome to the Time Trust Trial contest, Round 4 (T3-4)! This round is an aerial imaging task. Here is your assignment:
Program your UAV to take photos from an altitude of ~400 feet that you then stitch together to make a single image showing an area of 500mx500m (a quarter square kilometer). Somewhere in that image, a Santa (or replica of a Santa, poster of a Santa, just you wearing a Santa hat, etc) must be seen. NO PHOTOSHOP (ie, the sample above would be disqualified)--you actually need to bring something Santa-ish to the field so your UAV can capture it in its shots (yes, I know it will be very small. Just circle the location in your image so we can enlarge and inspect--don't make us do "Where's Wally"!) This is to prove that the shots aren't actually taken from Google Earth ;-)
You can use any path strategy you want: "lawnmower", spiral, concentric circles, etc...
For stitching software, I use the free PTGui, but you're welcome to use whatever software you prefer.
And for your camera, may I suggest you hack up some cool way to trigger the shutter with our cool ServoSwitch?
KML tracks must be provided. Video is not required, but is suggested.
We've now switched to a six-week cycle, so the deadline is 12:00 midnight PST on Sunday, January 17, 2010 now Monday, January 18th due to the Martin Luther King holiday in the US.
The overall winner will be the best quality image, as decided by the judges (based on a combination of resolution, stitch quality and overall coolness--a clever Santa will win you brownie points, and a pretty area is no bad thing [note: snow is lovely, but be warned that it can confuse stitching software]), but everyone who completes the challenge will win a prize.
Enjoy!
A more interesting location:
Santa packed up Mrs. Clause, an Elf named Zack and two reindeer named Reaver and Xena and headed out on a 1 hour trek to the mysterious Trona Pinnacles. Some of you may recognize this area from movies such as Planet of the Apes and Star Trek V among others. Very Martian like.
I extended the run on each leg to give the camera more time to capture an image before turning. I also turn off the motor while shooting and upped the ISO to 200 to allow a faster shutter. Much reduced blurriness over the last run, but still a little work to be done. My little point and shoot starts to get noisy on the higher ISOs, but I thnk I can push it further without too much damage. This is where a larger more stable airframe would be nice, but I think this little foamy will be capable of taking some pretty good pics.
I went ahead and took the time to generate calibration data for my lens in wide angle mode and carefully stitched it together in Hugin using the planer technique. It turned out really well. I'm putting together a tutorial on the buildup of the AXN floater and the image processing for those that are interested. It'll be another week before I'm done though, the wife is already on edge about all the chores I'm shrugging off to play with my plane.
Hey Krzysztof,
I was at 125 meters. My lens is a 33mm equivalent so I'm covering a 136mx90m area per image. To allow for overlap I took a picture every 50m then shifted over 100m for another pass for a total of 50 pics.
I have another run of more interesting terrain that I'm trying to get processed. CS 2 keeps choking on the file size so I'm going to try Gimp.
I don't plot all the kml data when I convert but I've included all the manual and vertical components of the flight in this KMLDIYMissionToFloor.kml
I don't know much about Deep zoom It took 35 minutes for the computer to make it and a long time to upload to the web site. The Santa Claus was about 1.5 ft tall so its not easy to make out on top of the truck. I told Atto to fly at 120m and it does it based on barometric not GPS which isn't very good.
Comments
Santa packed up Mrs. Clause, an Elf named Zack and two reindeer named Reaver and Xena and headed out on a 1 hour trek to the mysterious Trona Pinnacles. Some of you may recognize this area from movies such as Planet of the Apes and Star Trek V among others. Very Martian like.
I extended the run on each leg to give the camera more time to capture an image before turning. I also turn off the motor while shooting and upped the ISO to 200 to allow a faster shutter. Much reduced blurriness over the last run, but still a little work to be done. My little point and shoot starts to get noisy on the higher ISOs, but I thnk I can push it further without too much damage. This is where a larger more stable airframe would be nice, but I think this little foamy will be capable of taking some pretty good pics.
I went ahead and took the time to generate calibration data for my lens in wide angle mode and carefully stitched it together in Hugin using the planer technique. It turned out really well. I'm putting together a tutorial on the buildup of the AXN floater and the image processing for those that are interested. It'll be another week before I'm done though, the wife is already on edge about all the chores I'm shrugging off to play with my plane.
Templet.kmlKML File:
Close ups. Unfortunately in all the excitement Santa left his hat and coat in the back of the sleigh.
Pinnicles 25pct.jpgA higher res image for those who care. ->
Canon SD780 ... Must go shopping quick ;-)
I was at 125 meters. My lens is a 33mm equivalent so I'm covering a 136mx90m area per image. To allow for overlap I took a picture every 50m then shifted over 100m for another pass for a total of 50 pics.
I have another run of more interesting terrain that I'm trying to get processed. CS 2 keeps choking on the file size so I'm going to try Gimp.
I don't know much about Deep zoom It took 35 minutes for the computer to make it and a long time to upload to the web site. The Santa Claus was about 1.5 ft tall so its not easy to make out on top of the truck. I told Atto to fly at 120m and it does it based on barometric not GPS which isn't very good.
Trying to upload a picture but may it too big, I guess I could try to just upload as a file.
DiydronesMission3 035.jpg
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