Community Garden Phantom Flights

Introduction

For this weeks activity, the class met at the Community Garden right behind South Middle School in Eau Claire, WI. Students practiced with setting up the GCPs constructed in the previous week and collecting the coordinates of the GCPs using a survey grade GPS. Students were then introduced to the DJI Phantom Advanced which was then used to map the garden. The imagery along with the GCPs was to then be processed in Pix4D.

Methods

Using the GCPs that were constructed the previous week, students set up GCPs 1-9 around the garden in a well spaced out fashion. The GCP coordinates were then collected using a survey grade GPS unit where the unit was placed directly over the GCP before collecting the point. GCP coordinates were collected in order from 1 through 9, that way the numbers on the GCPs themselves would match up with the GCPs in the Pix4D project when transferred over into Pix4D.

Phantom Flight 1

After the coordinates were collected, the instructor introduced students to the DJI Phantom Advanced and went through certain controls and how to set up a flight before launching the UAV. For this flight, the flight was flown at 70 meters and captured images of the garden that contained the GCPs.

The images were then processed similarly to that of the previous exercise 'Processing Pix4D Imagery Using GCPs.' The instructor provided the images for flight 1 in a separate folders and the GCPs in text file format which could then easily be transferred over into Pix4D.

Step 1: Create a new project in Pix4d. Give it an appropriate name (20170502_gardenphantom_gcps) and save it to a personal folder created for this assignment

Step 2: Add images from folder 20170502_garden_phantom_70m > Flight1

Step 3: Go into the editing options for the camera and change the Shutter Model to 'Linear Rolling Shutter'

Step 4: Select '3D Maps' for the template

Step 5: Go into Project > GCP/MTP Manager and click on 'Import GCPs' and select the file 'GCP20170502_MASSAGED.txt' and change the Coordinates Order to the 'Y, X, Z' option

Step 6: Uncheck processing steps 2 and 3 and click 'Start' to begin Initial Processing



Results/Discussion

Conclusion