Gatoreye unmanned flying laboratory
The GatorEye UnmannedFlying Laboratory (GE-UFL) is a new sensor suite with dual flight platforms being built with funding from co-directors Drs. Broadbent (pilot and flight ops) and Almeyda Zambrano (applications and flight ops). The GatorEye is of scientific interest to many faculty and students across campus, with a core team of: Drs. Barnes (SFRC), Binford (Geog.), Bohlman (SFRC), Southworth (Geog.), and Wilkinson (SFRC).
The sensor package includes a Headwall Photonics VNIR 270 spectral band hyperspectral sensor with Hyperspec III software to control polygon acquisition areas and which can be manually triggered from within Phoenix software, a Phoenix LiDAR VLP-16 dual-return LiDAR sensor capable of 600,000 returns per second with Phoenix live and post-processing software, and a global shutter gige RGB camera bore-sighted to all sensors to RGB colorize LiDAR point clouds. All sensors are bore-sighted to enable immediate live 3D LiDAR data feed and a live visual feed via visual cameras (GoPro Black) on the flight platforms. Upcoming improvements include integrating a Gobi radiometric thermal sensor.
This sensor suite is geolocated to < 5 cm using a dual frequency GNSS and post-processed kinematic algorithms relative to a base station, and with orientation obtained from a high-resolution tactical grade Inertial Movement Unit (IMU) (STIM 300) post-processed against a dual-frequency base station using Inertial Explorer software. The location of the base station itself is determined using the online Trimble CenterPoint RTX post-processing platform.
The flight platforms include both a vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) DJI Matrice 600 Pro hexacopter capable of 14-18 minute flight times for smaller areas (<20-30 acres per flight, and with 5 sets of batteries currently available for multiple flights per day) and with a 5 km telemetry / control range, and an Applied Aeronautics Albatross fixed-wing platform capable of 3+ hour flights with live video and telemetry feeds of up to 100 km via a UAV antenna tracking system at the ground station, and which features redundant tracking systems.
The sensor package includes a Headwall Photonics VNIR 270 spectral band hyperspectral sensor with Hyperspec III software to control polygon acquisition areas and which can be manually triggered from within Phoenix software, a Phoenix LiDAR VLP-16 dual-return LiDAR sensor capable of 600,000 returns per second with Phoenix live and post-processing software, and a global shutter gige RGB camera bore-sighted to all sensors to RGB colorize LiDAR point clouds. All sensors are bore-sighted to enable immediate live 3D LiDAR data feed and a live visual feed via visual cameras (GoPro Black) on the flight platforms. Upcoming improvements include integrating a Gobi radiometric thermal sensor.
This sensor suite is geolocated to < 5 cm using a dual frequency GNSS and post-processed kinematic algorithms relative to a base station, and with orientation obtained from a high-resolution tactical grade Inertial Movement Unit (IMU) (STIM 300) post-processed against a dual-frequency base station using Inertial Explorer software. The location of the base station itself is determined using the online Trimble CenterPoint RTX post-processing platform.
The flight platforms include both a vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) DJI Matrice 600 Pro hexacopter capable of 14-18 minute flight times for smaller areas (<20-30 acres per flight, and with 5 sets of batteries currently available for multiple flights per day) and with a 5 km telemetry / control range, and an Applied Aeronautics Albatross fixed-wing platform capable of 3+ hour flights with live video and telemetry feeds of up to 100 km via a UAV antenna tracking system at the ground station, and which features redundant tracking systems.
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Mission planning and ground station software is Universal Ground Control Station (UGCS) for the hexacopter and Mission Planner and UGCS for the fixed-wing.
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Photogrammetric processing of RGB images to 3D surfaces and orthomosaics is conducted using Pix4Dmapper Pro on a customized workstation (256 GB RAM, 20 Cores * 40 processors on dual boards, 8 drive RAID, dual-Graphics cards, fused dual network with 600 MBS connection) at the Spatial Ecology & Conservation (SPEC) Lab. LiDAR data is processed and RGB colorized using Phoenix SpatialFuser, QT Modeler, and LASTools. |
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Hyperspectral data is processed using Headwall Photonics Spectralview III, to create ortho-rectified radiance imagery (mW/(cm2 * sr * µm), which is then converted to reflectance (following scaling to µW/(cm2 * sr * nm)) using Fast Line-of-sight Atmospheric Analysis of Hypercubes (FLAASH) in ENVI/IDL. Current work is on developing a custom ortho-rectification algorithm. Longer term plans include transitioning to ATCOR-4 for reflectance processing, which includes detailed topographic corrections (e.g., canopy topography).
Sensor fusion and product generation is conducted in ENVI + IDL, and eCognition (in development) geospatial analysis software linked with ESRI ArcGIS software. |
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Data collection campaigns have been conducted and are ongoing in the US (Florida, Vermont, and New Hampshire), and in Brazilian Amazon and Cerrado, and Costa Rica. Missions being planned are in Panama, Peru, Bolivia and Malaysia.
If you have an collaboration you would like to discuss please contact Eben Broadbent or Angelica Almeyda Zambrano directly via email. Thanks for your interest!
Sample Data: For viewing only please see some sample LiDAR and hyperspectral data below.
- Sample post-processed LiDAR data, DEM, and DSM.
- Hyperspectral Reflectance (multiplier = 10000) and related files
To view hyperspectral images, you could try: Multispec online
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