Unmanned glider imaging - GoForce One

Below is a write-up from one of our recently graduated students, Bobby Sudekum.  Bobby has worked for us in the Spatial Analysis Lab for over a year, doing everything from heads-up digitizing to LiDAR processing, to project management.  With GoForce One Bobby combined his geopspatial expertise with his passions for planes, skiing, and photography.  His work on GoForce One ended up winning him this year's ASPRS Central New York region student award.  You can find out more about Bobby on his web site.  He will likely be moving on from the SAL in the fall so if you are looking to hire a highly talented and motivated individual for your organization, Bobby might be the perfect fit.

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Go Force One
Bobby Sudekum

When I was younger, I was always interested in aviation.  I loved flying the wind up rubber band-powered balsa wood planes.  I dreamt about owning an r/c plane but for some reason, but Santa never came though.  Fast-forward 15 years to my introductory Remote Sensing class.  Little did I know that when I signed up for this class, I would be participating in a service learning project centered around flying r/c planes equipped with cameras to learn more about Remote Sensing. I was ecstatic.

Fast-forward again to the fall of 2011.  I am sitting in Economics of Public Policy, day dreaming about a mountain bike film in which they use a camera mounted on a zip line to achieve some stunning angles of mountain bikers. I began to wonder “How can I achieve the same effect with a skier, but with out the zip line?”  I’m thinking, scratching my head, tapping my pencil...and then it dawns on me.  Airplanes.  I remember back to my Remote Sensing class.  The planes we used were by no means powerful nor big, and the cameras also fared on the heavier side of things. After class, I immediately called my roommate who was an engineer.  “Mike, think about this. Glider plus a GoPro (a small hd video camera) plus deep powder plus a skier.”  There was a long pause followed by, “Bob, it’s a great idea but I don’t think it will fly, its just too heavy.”  I was not convinced.

I began to look around the Internet for the largest foam glider I could find.  I found one with a 54” wingspan for $9.95.  I jumped on it, and bought two.  The planes arrived and both of my engineering roommates shook their heads.  I didn’t care.  I knew, from the experience I had in my Remote Sensing class that it was possible. I chopped the nose off one of the planes and put a piece of Velcro on the camera and the nose. On a cold January morning, I threw the glider-camera combo off the balcony of a friend’s house.  Not only did it fly, it flew better than anyone thought it would.

My roommates and I thought I had come up with a million dollar idea.  We had this idea that we could capitalize on this new technology.  For the next couple of months, we tested Go Force One (GoPro + Air Force One) in secrecy.  Some of the footage we recovered from the plane was unbelievable, some of it was less than optimal.  Halfway through the ski season, I sought for a mechanism to share my work with others.  So I made a video with some of the footage and a little information about how it works.  I thought that if people could build off of my idea, my plane could end up soaring longer and higher. Open source if you will. I have since then received a lot of good feedback from the video, and my eyes have been opened to many new ideas.  I am glad I shared my idea with people.

Through trial and error we found what best worked for our UAV.  We learned that it is designed to break, so we bought a decent amount of epoxy to glue it back together.  We learned that you must throw it a lot to get the results we were looking for, because it flies where it wants to fly.  Many people have asked me why I have not tried putting a motor and some controls on it.  My answer is simple. It is a simple machine.  It is something I can bring to the top of the mountain, through behind a skier, and not worry about it crashing into a tree. For now it is a simple machine, but in the near future I plan to move to more technical devises more specifically r/c planes.

This past semester, I enrolled in a special topics class, the focus of which was to apply object-based image analysis (OBIA) techniques to tackle real-world issues identified by non-governmental organizations through the Planet Action network.  For my project I generated a 6 class land cover data set for the Sierra de las Cruces mountain range to the west of Mexico City, Mexico using Trimble’s eCognition Developer.  The data will be used to monitor the depletion of forest cover over time.

At the end of the semester it occurred to me that OBIA techniques might be applicable to the images captured via Go Force One.  Using a single frame from one of the flights as a test case I set out to see if it would be possible to classify the image like I did for my project in Mexico.  Figure 1 shows the original frame used to classify the image.

The process began through the application of a multiresolution segmentation algorithm to aggregate pixels into image objects as seen in Figure 2.

Using a combination of spectral and spatial properties, the objects were then classified as either sky, tree, or snow.  The results, which are rather impressive, can be seen in Figure 3.

The implications of this simple experiment are in my opinion outstanding and exciting.  It is exciting because I think that small UAV like Go Force One, represent the future.  Technology such as Go Force One, combined with OBIA techniques offers an end-to-end solution that is robust, transferable, and most importantly, affordable.  Although we already have high-resolution spatial imagery of much of the earth, much of it is outdated and it is sometimes it is difficult to stay up to date.  With a UAV, imagery could be gathered for a small city more often, or perhaps imagery could be gathered moments after a natural disaster to monitor damages.

Looking to future, I plan to continue to fly Go Force One, refine its design, and also move onto other aerial imagery projects.  My next project is Go Force 2.0.  Go Force 2.0 will be an r/c plane with a stronger camera capable of capturing sub-meter spatial imagery.  I hope to team up with a seasoned pilot; he or she will fly it, I’ll do the camera and analysis work.  My biggest plans though are to one day fly a UAV over a small town, gather imagery, and apply OBIA techniques to map land cover change over much more rapid time intervals than is typically possible.  To find out more about Go Force One, and to see some of the shots, please go www.vimeo.com/bobbys/goforceone.