UAV

An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), is an aircraft without a human pilot on board. Its flight is either controlled autonomously by computers, or under the remote control of a pilot on the ground. The term "drone" encompasses a range of UAV's including the microcopter, mini UAV or small UAV, Micro Air vehicle (MAV), rotor-UAV or RUAV, quadrocopter, hexacopter, octocopter, Bi-copter, Tri-copter, helicopter and Fixed wing planes.

This wiki page is intended at presenting the rationale for the incorporation of UAV* image data in OSM.

We will focus here on a small UAV Framework less than 2 kg,the size is up to 1.5 m and the cheapest price as possible using open source autopilot and software as seen in the table below.

As of 2013 many standard cheap off the shelf drones exist like the DJI Phantom 2 Vision with 25 minutes flying time^[1], or another open framework drone with a HD WiFi camera like the Gopro Hero or Hero3^[2] or 41-megapixel Nokia Lumia 1020^[3], improvements on parts are readily available^[4] and in quality for DSLR aerial photography up to HD live video.^[5] See some example of an aerial photo done with an UAV swinglet cam, resolution 4cm):^[6]

Camera

Time-lapse (intervalometer) fixed-lens cameras which can take pictures continuously are available in the market^[7], but as First Person View with a permanent link is preferred to see where you fly if the UAV goes out of sight the HD WiFi cameras and cell phones with wireless and GSM are getting more common at the moment. For multi purpose cameras, The US Agricultural Research Service en Science Applications International Corp reduced the costs of near-infrared spectroscopy by using a standard 12-Mpixel camera that didn't use a hot-mirror filter to block the NIR spectrum and added an additional optical Wratten number filter.^[8] Considder the gimbal suspension and side protection frames to protect your camera on landings.

Range Extenders

To extend the range standard HDMI Long Range Wireless Extenders^[9] (Wireless (Wifi) Repeaters) are used up to 984 feet (400-450 m) line-of-sight. Cellular GPRS modems can be used.^[10] A cheap solution is to combine a CC3D and EzUHF 4-Channel RX with PPM.^[11] A tracking station comes in different sizes.^[12] An omni type antenna for short range and your directional antenna like a helical, yagi or patch.

Data import to OSM

OpenStreetPhoto used its OpenStreetPhoto/QuadCopter for UAV image data in collaboration with Opengeo ^[13]. In a later stage it moved to a Fixed Wing configuration. The Vertical_Aerial_Photographs#Homebrew section has some links on how to import.

FAQ

Why using aerial imagery rather than satellite imagery?

The resolution of images is an issue when you are updating cartography over disaster and slum area. In one hour UAV flight you can provide you a coverage of 2 km2 with a pixel resolution of 4cm and a DEM (Digital Elevation Model) at 10 cm. Satellite imagery can cover a large area (20*20 Km) for one tile with a resolution of 50 cm.

So both images from satellite and UAV/aerial photo are essential to have a better accuracy in a specific area, it is complementary.

With an UAV the only constraint you have it the wind and the rain, but you can still take picture under cloud and when you want without any license issue.

See also

• Other pages in Category:Aerial photography
• UAV-HAITI
• 3D Development/Capturing
• OpenStreetPhoto
• OpenStreetView
• Photo mapping
• Vertical Aerial Photographs
• http://opendronemap.org
• OpenAerialMap (https://openaerialmap.org/)

References

UAV components

UAV frameworks