Application of Drone Technology towards Economic Benefit of

Southwest Georgia

Atin SinhaAlbany State UniversityAlbany, GA

Civilian Applications of Drones

Entertainment Industry (movie making)

Agricultural (monitoring crop health)Disaster Response & Fire FightingAssessment of Property DamageSearch & RescueLaw EnforcementMapping and Ecological StudyShowcasing Properties in Real Estate

Laws governing Civilian Drone Flights

Limited up to 500’ in rural areas and up to 1000’ from top of tall buildings in congested areas

No commercial benefits can be realized as a result of the drone flight

Line of sight onlyNo night flyingCannot operate within 5 miles of

an airport

Project Goal

To engage undergraduate students to develop an unmanned aerial vehicle equipped with a sensory device to capture still or video images of large farmlands in visible and near infra-red wavelengths to obtain a composite vegetative index map by converting digital data to numerical values for precision agriculture (timely application of pesticide etc.)

Normalized Difference Vegetative Index (NDVI)

Most widely used index to identify vegetated areas and their condition

Obtained from multispectral (visible and near infrared) remote sensing data

Also used to quantify photosynthetic capacity of plant canopies

where VIS and NIR stand for the spectral reflectance measurements acquired in the visible (red) and near-infrared regions, respectively

NDVI map of British Isles in June 2003 and November 2003 (from NOAA AVHRR)

Breakdown of TasksAcquire or build a suitable droneLearn flying and controlling the drone for

safe operationAttach a camera to take HD videoPerform autonomous flight operations in

a pre-determined routeAcquire multi-spectral still or video

cameraAcquire necessary software to convert

the digital data to NDVI map of the terrain

Criterion of Selection of an Agricultural Drone

Quick repair/replacement of damaged parts

Battery life / Flight timePayload (single/multiple camera)

capabilityPortability in moving from one operation

to nextSafety and ease of operationInterchangeability of payloadEnvironmental Considerations (prevailing

wind and temperature)

Fixed Wing vs. VTOL Drone

Fixed Wing High speed, larger area covered, bigger

payloadIncreased battery life (typically 30 to 60 min)Launching device necessaryVery low altitude flight is not possible

VTOL (Quad/Hex/Octacopter)Low speed, precision flight, but payload is

limitedLimited battery life (12 to 20 min maximum)Vertical take-off & landing possible from small

clearing (as small as 50 sq ft) surrounded by trees

Available Quadcopter

Parrott AR Drone 2.0 ($299)

DJI Phantom 2 vision + V3.0 with camera, 3 axis gimble ($1058)

DJI Phantom for Go-Pro HD camera ($399 + around $400 for camera)

3D Robotics IRIS + ($750 + around $400 for Go-Pro camera + $210 for gimble)

Parrott AR Drone 2.0

3D Robotics IRIS +

Integrated Multi-spectral Camera & Software Solution

DRS Technologies Tamarisk 320 ($2300, 60g)Tamarisk 640 ($6100, 95 g)

Tetracam ADC Lite ($3795, 200g)ADC Micro ($3795, 90g)ADC Snap ($5495, 90g)

Camera & software acquired separately

Point and Shoot Cannon Powershot camera converted by MaxMax.com with IR filter ($800, 231g)

Agisoft Photoscan Stitching /Mosaic Software ($549)

QGIS.org Vegetation Index viewing software (Free)

Tasks yet to be completed

Design and build a harness for the camera to attach it to IRIS (just concluded)

Fly IRIS with multispectral camera to capture photos

Acquire software (Agisoft-photoscan) for stitching / viewing and get familiar with it

Obtain a mosaic of the field by the stitching the photos together

Generate NDVI map of the field by the viewing software (QGIS)

IRIS Flying with Modified Cannon Powershot

Vegetative Index (NDVI) Map

Acknowledgement:

The ongoing work is being funded by a training grant from Georgia Space Grant Consortium, sponsored by NASA