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!
Here is my entry. I did it whilst on holidays in Australia. I didn't have all my equipment but was able to complete the task with a reasonable result. I chose an undulating rural area for the task to make it interesting and to comply with the R/C model aircraft regulatory requirements. The flight was conducted early in the morning to escape the 35degC heat; the tree shadows are quite apparent. There could possibly be a kangaroo or two in the image as there were some hopping around.
I chose a lawnmower pattern with the altitude locked to 400ft above the takeoff altitude. Was quite windy so there were some deviations especially as the EasyStar had no ailerons installed. I had some friendly horses come over to see what I was doing:
For the Christmas tree, I used some red streamer in the shape of a triangle. It was placed to the right of the dam and left of the tree in the lower right-hand part of the stitched image. Here is a zoomed part of that image:
Well done all those that entered, I'm just consulting with Chris and adjusting results according to the S factor and we will get those and the next round out very soon.
Chris asked to increase the zoom in Deep Zoom so I used 100 percent scale instead of 75 percent. Go back to the web site and open both in different windows and you can see 100 percent is better. You can almost make out my little Santa Claus.
Comments
Here is the Google Earth kmz overlayed image with the 500m x 500m border drawn: T3R4_Griffin.kmz (65 MB)
Cheers, Mark
I must say I'm really pleased at the amount of fun I have seen this round, just the ticket.
The deadline was extended, my mistake earlier.
Aircraft: EasyStar with Paparazzi autopilot
Camera: Canon Ixus-80 8MP with CHDK installed.
Lens: d=6.2mm, phi(horiz)=50.7 degrees, phi(vert)=38 degrees
Resolution: 3.5 cm/pixel @ 400ft altitude
Photos: 112 taken, 65 used, 63 stitched.
I chose a lawnmower pattern with the altitude locked to 400ft above the takeoff altitude. Was quite windy so there were some deviations especially as the EasyStar had no ailerons installed. I had some friendly horses come over to see what I was doing:
For the Christmas tree, I used some red streamer in the shape of a triangle. It was placed to the right of the dam and left of the tree in the lower right-hand part of the stitched image. Here is a zoomed part of that image:
Here is the kml file: T3R4_Griffin.kml
I used Microsoft ICE to stitch the photos into the following image: ( 67 MB)
I then overlayed the image in Google Earth. Here is the overlayed image with the 500m x 500m border drawn: (65 MB)
Cheers, Mark
I understand that the deadline was extended by 1 day.
Cheers, Mark
Kisssys
I have something like that:
http://www.aerialrobotics.eu/examples/WinterPhotomapping-Large.jpgBut I don't like it, it looks too severe.
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