Wk11 Fall 2020

Introduction 

On the first week of November, Crew 1 partook in a series of flights and flight operations. The week began with a flight on Monday with Kaleb Gould and Dr. Joseph Hupy leading the field operation and Jeff Hines sorting and post-processing the data. On Tuesday, the entire class met with Measure Ground Control via an online call to discuss our experience using the platform throughout the year. Additionally, on Thursday Kaleb Gould, Jeff Hines, and Zach Miller aided the Purdue Forestry department by capturing live aerial footage of the burn in both RGB and thermal. 

Monday (11/2) – Martell Northern Plots 

On Monday, the weather forced one of the weekly flights forward by 3 hours. The surface wind was expected to build over the day to speeds outside the M600 Pros limitations. Per the Federal Aviation Administration's operational rules, it is not advised to operate a drone outside of the manufacturer published operating limitations. Any operation outside of this makes you a test pilot. Since we are not in the business of testing aircraft, we do not fly outside of them. 

Per the tradition of these flights, two flights were flown over the Martell Forest Area North end. The two flight plans are shown below. This has been flown over the past 11 weeks to watch the changing of the leaves, the leaf fall, and to provide data for plant type identification. They NE plot took 25 minutes to fly and the NW plot took. This was done in a survey grid with North – South laps, at 85% side lap and 75% overlap. This contrasts with our traditional 80-by-80 side lap, overlap that we normally fly with. This overlap similarity is important for the data processing. It provides the software more context for pixel matching and there for a more confident image output. The downside to high overlapping is an extended flight times meaning more batteries that are not always available. 

Northwest Plot

Northeast Plot

The third flight for the day was over a residential property located 6 miles north west of the university. This location was a first for us but the mission much the same as when we fly Martell or the Purdue Wildlife Area. The 10-minute mission was flown as a survey mission with passes going south west to north east, in line with the property. The camera was pointed straight down to capture images of the wooded area and adjacent area. This data will be reviewed and used to identify the extent of the invasive Amur Honeysuckle. In addition to this, the imagery will be used to identify property lines for development of an adjacent property. Using UAS (Unmanned Aircraft Systems) to gather development data like this can save hours of work. From this flight we are able to understand the topography, vegetation, and its density, identify property boundaries without further surveying, and help create projections for construction such as cost, equipment, and labor.

Tuesday (11/3) – Measure Ground Control Call 

On Tuesday, all the crews assembled to participate in a Zoom call with a representative from Measure Ground Control to discuss the program and how we have used it this past semester. The class discussed various glitches or crashes that they encountered with the app when out in the field. John Cox, a member of group one, mentioned one such crash that he and Jeff Hines encountered in the field during week 7. Ultimately though, the objective of the meeting was to offer any suggestions or improvements to the design team & discuss our experience utilizing the program. Once refocused, the class was able to provide some valuable feedback, such as implementing a feature for users to allow access to specific admin privileges to any subordinates. There were some features that students wanted to see that, surprisingly, do exist on the program that we as students cannot access. Such features include tracking flight progress among multiple crews or an active calendar that allows for visualization of flights, past and present. At the end of the call, the Measure team thanked us for our time and suggestions.

Thursday (11/5) – Martell Forest Controlled Burn 

On Thursday, a small team consisting of Jeff Hines, Kaleb Gould, and Zach Miller went out to Martell forest with the M210 attached with a thermal and RGB camera to capture live footage of a controlled burn. The operation began a little after 15:00 EST with Kaleb acting as PIC. The flight strategy consisted of orbiting the burn area and recording our footage of the fire developing as well as monitoring the temperatures via the thermal camera. Jeff and Zach acted as visual observers (VOs) while the aircraft was airborne as well as communicated with the staff and students that were leading the controlled burn.

Fire Control Putting Out Small Fires 

The team had some minor difficulties identifying the aircraft when flying near clouds of smoke. That said, Kaleb was fully aware of the aircraft’s position as he was utilizing the aircraft’s first-person view (FPV) thermal camera. A photo of the thermal view of the forest is included below. The VOs communicated with Kaleb their difficulties and extra care was placed to avoid smoke clouds for the rest of the operation. Additionally, Kaleb found that the thermal camera had an upper limit of about 353°F as no object exceeded that temperature despite reaching the number a multitude of times 

The burn continued according to standard, expected operations. The crew brought the M210 in twice to replace batteries, but as the aircraft was returning for the third set of batteries, Kaleb noticed that the burn crew was moving to a nearby plot and starting another burn. We quickly replaced the batteries and sent the aircraft to the second plot to continue recording footage. The second plot was much smaller than the first, so it only took one set of batteries to capture the entirety of the controlled burn. After the second plot finished burning, Kaleb brought the aircraft back down and everyone packed up the equipment. Before leaving though, we had a quick meeting with the fire crew to discuss what was captured, when they would receive this data, and any significant details that we picked out during our flight – in particular a falling tree that we were able to capture.