Mission 3: Surveying Building Structures [October 2003]

Mission Videos

Mission 2 [*.mov 5.7MB], [*.mp4 17.4MB]

Mission Context

One potentially lucrative application for UAVs in the future would be to automatically generate 3D reconstructions of terrain and physical structures on the terrain. This application would not only include as a goal the synthesis of terrain models, but also gathering additional data such as textures for buildings, etc. This assumes the ability to identify and classify physical structures too. The net result would be a highly accurate virtual reality of a particular region generated dynamically for immediate use or eventual use offline. The long term goal is to fully automate the process of taking an arbitrary region and autonomously gathering the necessary sensor data for the synthesis of accurate virtual realities. In this scenario, we demonstrate the autonomous collection of textures from physical structures which could be used for integration with elevation models, resulting in a more realistic depiction of a region. It is assumed that an elevation model exists and man-made physical structures of interest have been provided.

Pre-Mission Prep

The mission operator is given a region of interest with the goal of collecting texture data for each of the physical structures in the region. At the beginning of the mission, n structures can be arbitrarily chosen. For this mission, two buildings will be chosen, the Boathouse (bld21) and a small red hut to the east of the boathouse.

Mission Goal

Automatically generate a plan to fly to each of the n structures and take photos of each of its facades. Use the on-board GIS functionality to compute the waypoints from which to take photos. Use the on-board trajectory planner to generate trajectories which connect the waypoints into a segmented flight plan. Fly to each point autonomously, hover, point the camera and take pictures.

Scenario Sequence

1. Take-off (manually) from Home Base
2. Generate view waypoints for each of the two building structures and
   generate trajectories to y to and between these waypoints.
3. For each building structure, fly to each of its view waypoints, hover,
   collect a video stream.
4. Fly back to Home Base
5. Land (manually) at Home Base