UAS Mission at the Community Gardens Near South Middle School in Eau Claire, WI and Wetlands near Tomah, WI

Community Gardens Near South Middle School Eau Claire, WI


For this weeks lab the class gathered at the Community Gardens by South Middle School for its first time out of the computer lab to do some actual flying.  This involved going through the pre-flight procedure, setting up the mission planning software, and setting out the GCPs in a simple grid pattern.  A total station was used to get an accurate GPS location for all 9 GCPs (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Learning how to take a GCP with the Total Station

Now once all of the pre-flight procedures were accomplished, the first flight was with the DJI Phantom 3 Advanced.  It flew very quickly and systematically thorough its grid.  It flew at 70m over the community gardens and on nadir. The next flight with the phantom was flown at 70m with a 75 degree oblique angle over a group of vehicles.  The Phantom landed in nearly the same spot that it started in both times, which still, is quite amazing to watch.

Figure 2: DJI Phantom 3 Advance about to take off. 

The next flight was using the DJI Inspire 1 (Figure 3) to get some flying in.  Each student was allowed to trying spinning the Inspire and moving it forwards/backwards/left right to get the feel of the UAS.  There was not any mapping done with this.

Figure 3: The DJI Inspire 1 getting its pre-checks completed.

Figure 4: Map created of the South Middle School Gardens taken from the DJI Phantom 3 Advance. 

Wetlands in Tomah, WI

In Tomah, WI the Trimble UX5 was used to cover the large area of wetland.  This was a fixed wing UAS that 100% flew automatically. There was a large set up time from getting to the area to actually flying it which took almost a half hour due to the amount of steps involved in setting it up, but by doing it this way and having the directions in the program there should be no user error.  This drone was launched from a catapult that shot air through the engine area to signal the drone that it was launched.  The landing was also 100% automatic with no ability to take over other than to 'abort.'  This is slightly scary to watch due to the way it impacts the ground and how expensive the drone is. but to minimize and risk when landing it is good practice to walk the area that it was told to land in to look out for rocks or any other obstacles that could affect the drone. In Tomah the UX5 was flown at 55mph making it extremely quick to finish large areas and only need one flight time with a 45 minute charge. Down below is a video of the UX5 being launched.

Finally, near the end of the trip the final drone was finally able to get into the air after a small error and having to change the batteries around.  This drone had 6 props and 6 batteries, one for each of the props.  This drone was allowed to lose 3 of the props and still be able to land somewhat gracefully if there was the possibility of a malfunction.

 

 Figure 5: Drone going through pre-flight check.

Figure 6: Drone finally in the air!