Category Archives: Aerial/UAS
UAV News: Recent Court Cases
Here are two recent court cases involving the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) andusers of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). In both cases, the FAA’s position that their 2007 policy memorandum on UAVs, particularly in regard to their being used for commercial purposes, was found to be not legally binding. Rafael Pirker v. FAA In this court case,...
Drone Art: Art Meets the Science of UAS at Elevated Element
Our company, Elevated Element, uses UAS for aerial photography. Our monuments capture project came about when we were contacted by Direct Dimensions, a 3D modeling firm, with the idea of combining the techniques of aerial UAS photography and digital 3D scanning. We chose the Francis Scott Key Monument in Baltimore’s neighborhood of Bolton Hill because...
Accuracy With Small UAS Mapping
Two recent advances in heretofore unrelated technologies are giving birth to a new way to perform local-area metric mapping. The first is the development of small, unmanned aerial systems (sUAS), spurred on primarily by the miniaturization of autopilot components. The second is the development of novel algorithms for creating digital surface models from collections of...
From Traditional Photogrammetry to UAS
Photogrammetry has changed substantially in the past three decades. When Jeff Yates began in the business 32 years ago, he used a projection system known as a Kelsh two-bucket plotter. “That was four generations ago of photogrammetric systems hardware,” he recalls. “From there, we went to the analog stereo plotter. That was the second big...
Cardinal Systems’ Extraterrestrial Photogrammetry
On Earth, photogrammetrists can normally use man-made objects in their frame—such as a road of known width or a curb of known height—as scales. When none is present, they can insert such “ground truth” as needed—for example, by placing onto surveyed locations targets that will be visible in their images. On other planets in our...
The UAS Scene
The Association for Unmanned Systems International is a 10-year old association dedicated to tracking products, research, and applications for unmanned vehicles. This year’s conference in May in Orlando brought over 6,500 conference-goers to see products and information at the booths of over 500 exhibitors. The primary focus of the conference was airborne vehicles, but marine...
