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Week 3: Skydio Mapping
09/09/2025
This week’s assignment was essentially to begin understanding how to perform mapping missions with UAS. The selected platform was again the Skydio 2+, and the mission was completed at the Purdue Student Garden. This was a two dimensional scan of two different flight paths, both with varying areas and altitudes. An image of these two flight borders can be seen below in Figure 1. Initial setup included udnerstanding the weather (which was calm), designating PIC and VO roles, performing checklists to make sure the UAS was airworthy, and affixing return to home setting for the event of an emergency, just as was accomplished in the previous lab. An image of the pilot’s view of the garden can be seen below in Figure 2. Furthermore, a LAANC airspace authorization can be seen below in Figure 3 which was used for the flight (which was near the Purdue University Airport).
Figure 1: Study area
Figure 2: View of the Purdue Student Garden
Figure 3: LAANC authorization
The first flight of the day was conducted in the larger of the two borders, and this flight was conducted at the higher altitude of 200’ AGL. This was also done in a basic lawn mower pattern and with overlap and sidelap settings of 80%. It was also conducted with a nadir gimbal setting, meaning the lens was pointed straight down. An image of the selected flight path for this mission can be seen below in Figure 4. This scan had considerably less images than the second because the field of view was higher and there was not as much overlap of the images. However, this would mean that the image clarity would suffer.
Figure 4: First flight path
The second flight of the day was conducted in the smaller of the two borders, and this flight was conducted at the lower altitude of 80’ AGL. The overlap and sidelap settings were the same as the previous flight, but another change was that the camera lens was given a 75 degree bevel, allowing for a slightly different angle to take pictures at and get more detail of the ground. There was also the presence of a cross hatching flight path, and this allowed there to be more overlap of images and therefore a higher quality scan. This scan took more photos than the first because there was less field of view and the flight path was more complex. An image of this flight path can be seen below in Figure 5, which also included a flight around the perimeter of the study area. Further down, in Figure 6, an example image from the second flight can be seen.
Figure 5: Second flight path
Figure 6: Second flight example image
After the completion of the second flight, the drone was landed successfully and the data was stored accordingly for later use in map product creation. These two flights were successful, and the relationship between the two scans was confirmed. The first scan was faster and took less images because of the high altitude and simple flight path, but the scan lacked clarity. The second of the two flights had great clarity, but there were far more pictures and flight time to achieve that. A table of the associated flight data can be seen below in Figure 7. A copy of the full report is available upon request, and this data shows up again as scans in the final products page.
Figure 7: Flight data table
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