1. Application of Drone Technology towards Economic Benefit of Southwest Georgia Atin Sinha Albany State University Albany, GA

2. Civilian Applications of Drones Entertainment Industry (movie making) Agricultural (monitoring crop health) Disaster Response & Fire Fighting Assessment of Property Damage Search & Rescue Law Enforcement Mapping and Ecological Study Showcasing Properties in Real Estate

3. Laws governing Civilian Drone Flights Limited up to 500’ in rural areas and up to 1000’ from top of tall buildings in congested areas No commercial benefits can be realized as a result of the drone flight Line of sight only No night flying Cannot operate within 5 miles of an airport

4. Project Goal To engage undergraduate students to develop an unmanned aerial vehicle equipped with a sensory device to capture still or video images of large farmlands in visible and near infra-red wavelengths to obtain a composite vegetative index map by converting digital data to numerical values for precision agriculture (timely application of pesticide etc.)

5. Normalized Difference Vegetative Index (NDVI) Most widely used index to identify vegetated areas and their condition Obtained from multispectral (visible and near infrared) remote sensing data Also used to quantify photosynthetic capacity of plant canopies where VIS and NIR stand for the spectral reflectance measurements acquired in the visible (red) and near-infrared regions, respectively

6. NDVI map of British Isles in June 2003 and November 2003 (from NOAA AVHRR)

7. Breakdown of Tasks Acquire or build a suitable drone Learn flying and controlling the drone for safe operation Attach a camera to take HD video Perform autonomous flight operations in a pre-determined route Acquire multi-spectral still or video camera Acquire necessary software to convert the digital data to NDVI map of the terrain

8. Criterion of Selection of an Agricultural Drone Quick repair/replacement of damaged parts Battery life / Flight time Payload (single/multiple camera) capability Portability in moving from one operation to next Safety and ease of operation Interchangeability of payload Environmental Considerations (prevailing wind and temperature)

9. Fixed Wing vs. VTOL Drone Fixed Wing  High speed, larger area covered, bigger payload  Increased battery life (typically 30 to 60 min)  Launching device necessary  Very low altitude flight is not possible VTOL (Quad/Hex/Octacopter)  Low speed, precision flight, but payload is limited  Limited battery life (12 to 20 min maximum)  Vertical take-off & landing possible from small clearing (as small as 50 sq ft) surrounded by trees

10. Available Quadcopter Parrott AR Drone 2.0 ($299) DJI Phantom 2 vision + V3.0 with camera, 3 axis gimble ($1058) DJI Phantom for Go-Pro HD camera ($399 + around $400 for camera) 3D Robotics IRIS + ($750 + around $400 for Go-Pro camera + $210 for gimble)

11. Parrott AR Drone 2.0

12. 3D Robotics IRIS +

13. Integrated Multi-spectral Camera & Software Solution DRS Technologies  Tamarisk 320 ($2300, 60g)  Tamarisk 640 ($6100, 95 g) Tetracam  ADC Lite ($3795, 200g)  ADC Micro ($3795, 90g)  ADC Snap ($5495, 90g)

14. Camera & software acquired separately Point and Shoot Cannon Powershot camera converted by MaxMax.com with IR filter ($800, 231g) Agisoft Photoscan Stitching /Mosaic Software ($549) QGIS.org Vegetation Index viewing software (Free)

15. Tasks yet to be completed Design and build a harness for the camera to attach it to IRIS (just concluded) Fly IRIS with multispectral camera to capture photos Acquire software (Agisoft-photoscan) for stitching / viewing and get familiar with it Obtain a mosaic of the field by the stitching the photos together Generate NDVI map of the field by the viewing software (QGIS)

16. IRIS Flying with Modified Cannon Powershot

17. Vegetative Index (NDVI) Map

18. Acknowledgement: The ongoing work is being funded by a training grant from Georgia Space Grant Consortium, sponsored by NASA