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Week 6: Thermal Mapping
09/30/2025
This week’s lab was again conducted in order to understand how to operate a new platform in UAS as well as to understand the different products that can be generated from differing sensors. So far, on the stock RGB camera sensors available in the DJI Mavic 2 Pro and Skydio 2+ have been utilized, but this lab introduced the DJI Matrice M300 paired with a Zenmuse H20T thermal sensor. This allowed us to complete a two dimensional scan of the Purdue Student Garden in thermal imaging. First, the equipment was assembled, and after the running of checklists, the system was found to be airworthy. then, PIC and VO roles were assigned, and all operators were found to be properly certificated. The obstacles of the study area were then examined, and the only things of note were the trees and posts seen below in Figure 1, which were avoided with proper visual scanning techniques. The weather was found to be a little warm for some participants, but nothing of note for the drone. LAANC airspace authorization was acquired for being so close to class D airspace, and Figure 2 highlights this. Proper return to home settings were used, as seen in Figure 3, and the flight followed shortly after.
Figure 1: Study area
Figure 2: LAANC authorization
Figure 3: Flight and return to home settings
To conduct this flight, AT309 professor Hupy first tried to dowload the study area and flight path to the DJI controller, but this did not work. After immense technical difficulty relating to the interference of height parameters and limits for the scan, a new flight path was created on the controller fresh. This mission was flown at 200’ AGL, with nadir lens setting, and with 90% overlap for the frontal and lateral settings. This allowed for a good combination of quality imagery and time savings. After the scan was confirmed, the drone took off, and an image of this can be seen below in Figure 4. While in flight, two problems occurred. First, there were several low flying manned aircraft which put into jeopardy the continuity of the mission, and second, the flight was conducted slower than planned for some reason, jeopardizing the battery levels of the drone. Both problems never led to the discontinuity of the mission, but it provided operators with valuable experience in contingency awareness. An example image from the thermal camera can be seen below in Figure 5.
Figure 4: M300 takeoff
Figure 5: Thermal example image
Once the flight was completed, the drone was landed safely, and the system was dismantled properly. The flight data was saved and stored in the class data folder on the computer server for the class for a later date. This data would then go on to be used in the final data products assignment. Overall, this imagery of thermal nature should have been complimented by RGB imagery, but for whatever reason, these images were never taken. Nonetheless, this was an excellent assignment for confidence building and threat avoidance. This was also by far the largest scan in the course, and the immensity of the sata set caused processing delays later in the course. An image of the data from the flight can be seen below in Figure 6. A complete report for this lab is available upon request.
Figure 6: Flight data table
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