Date post: | 11-May-2015 |
Category: |
Design |
Upload: | llnl-belize-open-source |
View: | 372 times |
Download: | 1 times |
Simple, Inexpensive Aerial Photography Mapping with Balloons, Kites or UAVs
Engineers Without Borders West Coast Regional Workshop 2012 Patrick Coyle, EWB-‐SFP; PLOTS, Belize Open Source -‐ Sustainable
Development October 20, 2012
Agenda • Why bother? Aerial photomaps can be very useful
• Community, Site and Project Planning; Agricultural/ Ecological planning, evaluaIon
• How? In summary, what’s needed?
• Equipment, SoMware, Supplies, Materials
• Step-‐by-‐step guide • Examples from community of users
• What’s new
• DemonstraIon – let’s fly!
• See results, Q&A • Jeff Warren, PLOTS, produced community maps in Lima, Peru with children and adults
Step-‐by-‐step guide
For example, here is Coyle’s preliminary set of requirements: • Take detailed aerial photos of the Belize Open Source Sustainable Development
40-‐acre property with enough detail that individual trees are clear • Cover the site with overlapping images and use soMware to sItch them together
into a single photomap and georegister it to Google Earth imagery of the property
• Tag the individual photos with GPS data to geo-‐reference them for viewing on Google Maps, Google Earth, or for use with other applicaIons
• Develop methods to use the photomaps for work planning, tracking progress and communicaIng results to encourage parIcipaIon in the iniIaIve. Document the approach and techniques
• Apply the method to other community mapping iniIaIves and make it available to EWB teams and schools and communiIes in Belize
• Decide what you want to do, produce and deliver; thinking this through will help to define the requirements
What’s needed?
• Digital camera with ability to take photos automaIcally (at few-‐second intervals or conInuously (~1 per second)) • (advanced: pair of cameras, shooIng vis and IR in synch)
• GPS tracking unit (opIonal, where needed) • Package to house and protect the camera and GPS unit • Balloon or kite with enough liM capability to carry the camera, GPS unit,
housing and sufficient tether line to reach height of interest for the photographs (or UAV)
• Safe area to test the system and process • Safe approach to use the process in the field • Capability to process the data and present the results • Approach to discuss and use the results
A complete grassroots mapping kit
Illustrated Guide (By Jeffrey Warren)
Illustrated Guide (cont.)
Illustrated Guide (cont.)
Illustrated Guide (cont.)
Illustrated Guide (cont.)
Illustrated Guide (cont.)
“Neogeographic” approach to inexpensive oil spill mapping
• In April 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded and sank in the Gulf of Mexico, iniIaIng what may be one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history
• As the spill grew in size, Jeffrey Warren and Stewart Long collaborated with the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, a New Orleans-‐based environmental non-‐profit group, and began a volunteer-‐led aerial mapping project to document the spill’s effects
• The maps use orthorecIfied photographs of key affected sites processed into GeoTIFFs and Iled map services (TMS) -‐ the public domain photographs, taken from balloons or kites, are among the highest resoluIon imagery available of the spill
Oil Spill Mapping Kits • The mapping kits themselves, assembled for less than $300 each, consisted of:
• an 8-‐foot weather balloon • a tank of helium
• 2000 feet of string • an inexpensive, consumer grade digital camera
• half of a soda bople • a large kite • GPS logger (opIonal)
Oil spill mapping approach • ParIcipants visit an affected area, fill a balloon or prepare a kite depending on wind condiIons, and send the camera in its homemade protecIve enclosure up to 2000 feet in the air
• By walking along the beach or moving in a boat, several kilometers of coastline may be imaged in just a few hours
• Some maps, at ~ 2-‐3 cm nominal resoluIon, can count birds, plants and other features, even idenIfy bird species
Oil spill mapping trips and data • Between May 7 and July 22, 2010 dozens of parIcipants made 36 trips to gather mapping data, averaging almost one trip every other day
• Only one trip failed to return with imagery, 56% of the trips returned with "excellent" or "usable" data, and over 11,000 images were taken, mapping conInued through January 2011
• This is a case where the low-‐cost mapping techniques were applied to a real-‐world problem of immediate importance
OrthorecIficaIon (sItching) techniques • Two different manual processing methods have accounted for
the bulk of the mapping for Public Laboratory for Open Science and Technolgy publiclaboratory.org to date:
• Gonzo Earth Image Processing is a workflow of different commercial off-‐the-‐shelf (COTS) and open-‐source GIS and digital image soMware packages, which has been used to generate dozens of maps from balloons, kites, remote controlled and manned aircraM
• MapKniper, mapkniper.org, is web-‐based soMware for users to upload and recIfy images from a web browser
• Both export finished maps in standard formats that can be viewed in common GIS tools and integrated into exisIng workflows
A Grassroots Mapping collaboraIon in Georgia
• In the country of Georgia, Grassroots Mapping techniques were used alongside more tradiIonal GPS-‐based approaches by the OpenMapsCaucasus.org effort to produce a public domain map of the enIre country
• A map of MesIa, in the SvaneI region of Georgia. The map spans 5.5 kilometers and was captured in just 3 days of balloon and kite mapping with local OpenMapsCaucasus staff and parIcipaIng students
• Flight paths of several balloon mapping flights in MesIa, Georgia, during a 3-‐day project to map the enIre city
• The pictured flights reached 1.4 kilometers above ground level
Grassroots Mapping Belize
• Grassroots Mapping Belize -‐ Pat Coyle of Belize Open Source Sustainable Development is planning to apply these techniques to detailed mapping of a 40-‐acre property in northwest Belize and for other community mapping iniIaIves
• To date, I have commissioned the mapping tools and am conInuing to pracIce the techniques in the Bay Area
Site: Belize Open Source Sustainable Development
• This 40-‐acre rural property is located in northwestern Belize near the Mexican and Guatemala borders about 16 miles from Orange Walk Town, between the villages of August Pine Ridge and San Felipe and 3.5 miles to Rio Hondo Belize/Mexico border
belizeopensource.org
• Google Maps shows it, but unIl recently, two more clicks in and you ran out of pixels – it’s beper now
Planned grassroots mapping program in Belize
• Start with iniIal 1-‐2 week trip to engage schools, develop capabiliIes and make iniIal set of maps (Belize Open Source property, August Pine Ridge school classrooms and surrounding community, and others associated with parIcipaIng schools)
• Do a video and web documentary as we go, in context of a plan to: • develop capabiliIes, • archive, access and communicate with the images, • implement training through classes in local schools, • with ongoing workshops for future visitors to extend techniques
and map more of the country's sites of interest with emphasis on community needs and benefits to local users, as well as some the gorgeous sites
• Muffles College Environmental Sciences program is interested in parIcipaIng. Jeff Warren and Stewart Long, Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science, have parIcipated in planning
Blanca Torres, principal of the August Pine Ridge school, wrote, “The aerial photo mapping seems very interesting. I shared with my children and sisters the images of our village … and they just loved them. … I welcome these opportunities where I can involve my students in new learning experiences. I am very interested in exposing them through your mapping project. We feel pride in having our community appear in internet pages and more if we are involved in getting those images.”
• In progress and completed new classroom building • Richard Obratil, Chapter President, Project Manager/Site Engineer EWB-Cleveland State University Chapter, wrote, “... Here are pictures of the building…”
• Balloon test flight in the front yard with neighbors
• Niles, CA: Google Earth imagery shows center under construcIon, the sItched map shows completed facility
• PracIce flight: Angel Island, CA
• PracIce flights: Livermore, CA
• Sunol, CA:
• “Personal aerial photo-mapping session with balloons or kites,” a fundraising auction item, was successful • 7/22/12, Nile Runge, who had bid on the item at a Livermore Rotary Club fundraiser, and I flew two mylar sleeping bag balloons with a Canon A1200, shooting in continuous mode in a juice-bottle rig. • We flew at Shadow Cliffs Regional Recreation Area, Pleasanton, CA, a part of the East Bay Regional Park District
Advanced topics
• We’ll briefly discuss advanced topics:
• IntegraIon of gps data • Dual-‐camera based mulIspectral imagery • Automated image processing and 3-‐D Digital ElevaIon Models
• UAVs
IntegraIon of gps data
Groundbased photos geotagged with gps data, displayed in Picasa map view
IntegraIon of gps data
Screenshot of aerial photos geotagged with gps data, displayed in Google Earth
Dual-‐camera based mulIspectral imagery
• Dual cameras, visible and IR synched with timer controlled CHDK • Multispectral image processing and rectification – automated with Ned Horning’s software
Automated image processing and 3D Digital ElevaIon Models
• On PLOTS, Ned Horning recently summarized several cloud-‐based or desktop soMware packages; some free with limits, some open source, which use structure from moIon (SFM) soMware to provide automated image processing, including:
• Online: www.hypr3d.com, dronemapper.com, pix4d.com, photosynth.net, www.terrapanlabs.com
• Proprietary soMware: www.123dapp.com/catch, www.agisoM.ru/products/photoscan
• Open source: VisualSFM, homes.cs.washington.edu/~ccwu/vsfm/
3-‐D Digital ElevaIon Models
Clockwise: Bay area examples using pix4d.com, dronemapper.com, www.hypr3d.com
UAVs
Wired magazine, “The drones are coming”…..
R/C aircraft testing in San Diego with pilot John Shultz
• Tested Swann "thumb" camera strapped under the AR Parrot 2 • "Training wheel" settings are still on, so altitude is low, maybe 15-20 feet • The AR Parrot 2 is a toy, it also brings the drone "baggage” • The cautionary notes, especially those of lost, fly-away drones are sobering • I'll proceed with caution. But, it is fun!
hIp://mapkniIer.org/
• MapKniIer is a free and open source tool for combining and posiPoning images in geographic space into a composite image map
Get Involved • publiclaboratory.org provides techniques and tools, case studies
• ParIcipate: join the mailing list
• Start a grassroots mapping project
• Apply the techniques to your project
Grass Roots Mapping Supporters and Collaborators
You The Design Ecology group at the MIT Media Lab
Let’s fly, Q&A
• We are outside flying, catch up with us • We’ll come back and try to make map • Look at the rest of the talk