Field Notes One

Mission 1 Report

Introduction:

Most people do not realize how different phone GPS is compared with a survey GPS.  Our mission purpose was to introduce our class to the elements of setting up a survey environment.  We set up different GCPs throughout the field using single frequency GPS station and Propeller GCPs.

Study Area:

We conducted our survey mission at the Purdue Wildlife Area.  The mission setup began at 11:10 a.m.  The flight occurred at 12:30 p.m.  The weather conditions were wind SSE at 3 mph with clear skies at 400 ft. and with a temperature of 60° F.

Methods:

First we had to establish the boundaries for the mission we wanted to perform. Then we attempted to evenly spread out yellow Propeller GCPs around the field.

These markers seen to the left have an internal GPS to help make processing of data more accurate.

We also spread out traditional single solution tie points throughout the field. 

We attempted to use them but were unable to setup the single frequency traditional tie points because the GPS on the Reach Unit Station (green piece to the left) could not connect to the cellular network.

We used the Mavic 2 Pro set for 400 feet to perform the mission.  The camera was angled at -90° to capture the mission images.  We aborted the first flight early on and then completed the entire second flight.

Discussion

Above in the Purdue Wildlife Orthomap you can see the different details that were important to note for the mission.  In Inset A, it is showing the difference in accuracy between the phone GPS and a surveyor GPS.  The accuracy of the surveyor GPS is within millimeters.  Soon phone GPS' will have close to the same quality as a surveyor GPS.

Inset B displays how high quality the orthomosaic is.  In that picture, I am seen in the purple shirt.  We were originally spread throughout the field to test our teaching assistant's program called Loc8. This program is used for search and rescue using a previous image taken of the missing person that the program references to match different colors.

The image seen above represents the 3D model of the orthomosaic.  Below is an image showing the dsm version of the mosaic.

Conclusion

One of the main takeaways from this mission is that surveyor GPS' are incredibly accurate compared to the average cellphone GPS.  Our class also successfully learned how to operate programs such as ArcCatalog, ArcMap, and ArcScene.  These programs gave us the results I presented.