Hey from Chicago

[mabillionaire]

Hey,

I met SleepyC at a drone safety workshop in Cleveland. I am a geography student with a concentration in GIS (geographic information systems). I am interested in UAVs for map making and 3D modeling as well as video/photo work. Don't have that much experience on the electronics end so for now I plan on buying the Iris+, due to its open source software, price, and auto-pilot, with some scholarship money (not a lot though) that I am thankful for. I hope to one day make a living off of UAVs and travel the world utilizing this technology. This seems like a great community full of knowledge and experience so I wanted to join. I am receptive to any advice or comments!


Thanks,
mabillionaire

 

[Bartman]

stop hanging around with Sleepy

is that the advice or comments you had in mind?

 

[Bartman]

in all seriousness, welcome to the site @mabillionaire

sleepy's been telling me about the crew that is slowly but surely taking over north Ohio so I'm glad you've decided to come join us and have a look around.

@Kilby is a good resource for what you're looking to do, if we can lure him back to chime in he'll probably have a few good first steps to offer.

welcome!
bart

 

[mabillionaire]

Appreciate the warm welcome @Bartman !

 

[Kilby]

Hello @mabillionaire . Welcome to MRF. From what you have described above, you want to look into photogrammetry as your first step. The concept is simple enough... photograph your subject from every possible perspective and feed that dataset into one of a number of different programs that will then stitch it all back together and create a 3D model. In addition, you need to find some way to geo-reference your model. This can happen by using a camera with built in GPS, or by capturing the location coordinates from known objects in your subject.

This video shows one of the first models we created last year. We basically flew around the monument in vertical columns, always facing in towards the monument. After flying all the way around, we had a few hundred photos and the computer really did the rest of the work.

The big problem with getting involved with photogrammetry is the cost of the software to process the images. It can be several thousand dollars for a single seat. Luckily, there are a few cloud solutions that are just starting to hit the market which allows you to pay only for what you use.

Check out http://dronemapper.com/ for some info on cloud processing. They have a lot of info on their site.

-Terry

 

[Bartman]

Should I set up a new sub-forum for this topic? 3D mapping maybe? Photogrammetry? what would we call it? will you guys use it to share info?

 

[Kilby]

I would love that, @Bartman. Perhaps just calling Aerial Mapping would be best since there are so many different things that make up mapping. If you put that up, I'd be willing to write a bunch of initial posts to get the ball rolling. There are a ton of cool things happening in that space right now that I don't think a lot of people are aware of.