Recent Changes

This is documentation of an archived release.
For documentation on the current version, please check Knowledge Base.

Preflight: prepare your MD flight

Steps to be taken:
1. Open Orbit UAS Mapping extension & Create new flightplan project
2. Select MD-type & camera
3. Choose coverage mode
4. Import background material
5. Add the area to cover
6. Change UAV settings & coverage settings
7. Generate your flight plan (& Change home position per flight) (& Check results)
8. Save your flight plan for MD import & Import flight data

1. Open Orbit UAS Mapping extension

Orbit UAS mapping solution is an extension to and bundled with the core Orbit GIS product. In other words, all standard GIS functionalities of Orbit GIS (such as editing, georeferencing, query builders, etc) can be used in the Orbit UAS Mapping Software. For more information on Orbit GIS functions, see here.

To start the UAS Mapping software, open the main toolbar 'extensions' by clicking on the extension button and choose for Orbit UAS Mapping Extension.

The UAS mapping extension will appear in the sidebar position. To deal with the knowledge base directly you can activate the help button in the main toolbar.

2. Create new flightplan project

To start a new flightplan, click on the wheel icon and activate a new project. The software will inquire a place to save the file (and folder structure).
Using this button, you can open or activate old flight projects as well. Select the previous saved *name*.oup file in your directory to open the previous flight plan. You can also drag and drop the *name*.oup file in the sidebar to open or select your flightplan in the recent project list.
Make sure that your workspace has a projection system. Without this, coordinates cannot be interpreted correctly (see video tutorial below). To add a CRS, click on the map statusbar and choose your CRS.
After opening or creating a new flight plan, the flight mode will be activated.

Be sure that you take the CRS of the location of the flight!

3. Select MD-type

First, select (or change) your uav type by activating the 'UAV Type' in the 'Hardware Setup'.

Select your type of microdrones system
Add the vertical down angle parameter in degrees. Once you've calculated the vertical down angle, you can always use your default value for future flight plans. If you have more questions about this step, please contact Orbit GT.
Add (if needed) a yaw correction angle in degrees. More information about the yaw-angle can be found on the wiki page about aircraft principal axes

4. Add, select or create camera

Secondly, add your camera specifications (coming from the calibration) to the cameradatabase and select your camera for this project.

For the used camera following information is required :

Field	Declaration	Units	Necessity
Camera name	Any unique name linked to the position and orientation file	string	required
Focal Length	The focal distance of the lens expressed in mm Wikipedia Focal Length	mm decimal (point) notation	required
Sensor longtrack	The exact value equal to the number of pixels in the longtrack multiplied by the pixel size	mm decimal (point) notation	required
Sensor crosstrack	The exact value equal to the number of pixels in the crosstrack multiplied by the pixel size	mm decimal (point) notation	required
Sensor pixel size	Physical size of the pixels in CCD camera sensor.	micron decimal (point) notation	required
PP Longtrack (Focal Point X)	The principal point value along the sensor longtrack expressed in mm (origin center of the image). Wikipedia Focal Point	mm decimal (point) notation	optional
PP Crosstrack (Focal Point Y)	The principal point value along the sensor crosstrack expressed in mm (origin center of the image).	mm decimal (point) notation	optional
K1, K2, K3	Radial distortion parameters, regarding the formulas of D.C. Brown Wikipedia Distortion	decimal (point) notation	optional
P1, P2		decimal (point) notation	optional

Calibration must be done using calibration plates as showed below. More information can be found at Tutorial Camera Calibration. More information on the options of the camera database or how to define a new camera can be found here

5. Choose coverage mode

In Orbit UAS Mapping extension two options are available.
You can generate a flight plan to cover an area or you can choose to do a corridor mapping.

horizontal plane:	Cover an area according a photogrammetric strip overlap way.
corridor:	Cover a corridor (linear mapping) with a specific buffer distance.

Please select your flight mode to continue the knowledge base about the preflight process.

To get back to the overview, click this icon.

Last modified:: 2019/03/25 11:36