Unmanned Systems Geospatial Applications

Introduction In this lab, we explored Measure Ground Control.  This is a software platform that is advertised as the “most complete software platform for drones,” and it is used as the SSoT (Single Source of Technology) solution for Purdue’s SATT UAS DJI fleet.  The reason why this software is popular in the industry and many educational programs like this one is due to how easy it can make everyone’s life by having the flight mission planning, execution, and record keeping in one place.  This makes it extremely easy to keep the projects organized without having a bunch of applications to keep track of what has which feature. With every UAS project, the planning starts in the office and should never begin at the site. The main reasons for this, is to ensure that the equipment is reliable, estimating the time it takes for the data collection, to processing, to delivery, and then informing the customer of this timeline, and lastly, to ensure that the necessary components of the pro

Introduction In this lab, we made use of two online tutorials on ArcGIS Online.  The tutorials ( Try Collector and Make your First Collector Map )  walked us through how to use the Arc Collector app, the abilities of it, and how to create a collector map with it.  The Arc Collector app is a mobile data collection app that makes it easy to capture accurate data in the field and return it to the office.  This can be helpful if you are on a job site, taking field notes, and employing traditional GCP markers, having an image associated with it. The type of geospatial data that is able to be collected and recorded in the field can make a GIS project invaluable, as it allows for a higher accuracy project (UAS project potentially).  Let’s get started! (The park that will be used for the data in this lab) Methods To start, the first tutorial ( Try Collector ) is extremely helpful in understanding some of the basic  aspects of the Arc Collector app. Some of these basic aspects