[OAM-talk] starting to map with small UAV

[Hugo Meiland]

> I'm not an expert on what is available for UAVs, but I would expect you would be able to get GPS down to at submeter with some cleverness. Getting the orientation of the plane will be trickier - at a minimum you can get the approximate heading of the plane from the GPS log, but from what I've seen from the Camp Roberts UAV imagery it's not very reliable. You would probably want a digital compass and some sort of 3d gyro or accelerometer package to try to get the plane orientation. I suspect one of the challenges is not just getting high enough resolution at consumer prices, but also getting a fast enough response time. Most UAVs don't have as much mass as a Cessna and move around a lot more.
>
>   
This is something to look at; I know I "have" more data on-board to 
actually fly the plane, but not sure if I can access/store that data to 
add it as metadata to the pics....
> At the recent Random Hacks of Kindness event I was working with OAM listmember Jeffrey Johnson and Tim Caro-Bruce of Urban Mapping to create a system that would take roughly positioned UAV imagery and then using SIFT image matching  would more precisely georeference each frame to existing orthoimagery. I have the code almost finished - if this turns out to be a wet weekend I'll hopefully get it done.
>   
That sounds promising, please let me know what you have and how to use it...

thanks!

Hugo