After months of designing and bench testing we finally got to test fly our 5 camera oblique system. For a decent test we decided to fly the town of Mudgee in western NSW at 6 cm GSD. WE were really happy with how the system performed. We were even happier with the image quality out of both the vertical camera and the 4 oblique cameras. Here is a small sample from one of the oblique cameras showing St Mary’s Church in Mudgee.
Test Flights
We did some flight testing of the Nikon D800E camera that we will be shortly integrating into our portable camera pods, with great results. On this flight we wanted to test the vertical accuracy of the sensor for it’s suitability in creating accurate DEM / DSM’s, for applications such as mining and quarrying. We flew an area with know ground control and created a test DSM, a snippet of which is shown below. We were more than happy with the GCP residuals in Z. We also flew the same are with our Hasselblad and I will be writing a more detailed post comparing the results from both sensors soon.
Survey Aircraft in Mudgee
We are moving our trusty survey aircraft to sunny Mudgee to better service our existing clients in the mining sector and the Hunter Valley. Basing out of Mudgee means that we can greatly reduce ferry costs and pass these savings on to our clients. So if you have a requirement for imagery in the Hunter Valley region or the central west drop us a line.
Camera Calibration
Have you got yourself a UAV and not quite getting the results you are after? It could be due to your camera calibration, a good camera calibration is absolutely essential for repeatable and accurate results. Packages like Agisoft lens are fine if you are simply chasing a photo mosaic. However for high accuracy work you really need a quality professional camera calibration. We offer a camera calibration service using a professional calibration package, with specialist photo reflective targets. We can calibrate a range of cameras including mirrorless, DSLR, and medium format cameras. Below are a few screen shots from a recent calibration that I performed on our Nikon D800E with a 24mm lens for use in our portable camera pods. Check out our camera calibration page for more info and if you need a camera calibrated we are happy to help.
Oblique Camera System
Fresh from the Aerial Acquisitions Skunkworks is our 5 camera oblique system. It will be comprised of 4 20 mpxl oblique cameras and one 36 mpxl vertical camera. This will allow us to fly regional towns and capture every building from N,S,E,W and directly above. It also has numerous other uses such as the creation of fantastic 3D models and point clouds. I will go into these applications further in future posts. To wet your appetite however here is a small video of our 4 oblique cameras being triggered simultaneously. We think its pretty cool. We hope to begin flight tests middle of next month and will fly Mudgee as our first test site.
Portable Camera Pods
After months of design and development our new portable camera pods for Cessna 172 aircraft are almost ready. We will be offering our pods as ready to fly turnkey systems, complete with flight management system, L1 GPS, camera, POD, and all the paperwork to keep CASA happy. Our flight management system is also optimized for pilot only operations.
We initially be offering two systems, one for mapping and a multi spectral option. Our mapping variant will include the 36 mpxl Nikon D800. While the multispectral option will included a Tetracam MCA 4 or 6 band camera. All cameras will be supplied with a complete camera calibration.
Hello world!
Hello World, and welcome to our new web site that will slowly be built over the next week or so
