Skip to content
Week 2 – Skydio 2+ Flight Familiarization
For this first lab assignment, we re-familiarized ourselves with the Skydio 2+ UAS platform and its imaging capabilities.
In previous courses, we had already been introduced to the Skydio 2+ and completed several short flight missions using it. This lab served as a refresher and helped reinforce proper operation, image capture techniques, and mission planning fundamentals that would be built upon in later labs.
Using the Skydio 2+ mobile application, we captured a series of images at varying altitudes while maintaining a camera angle of 90 degrees relative to the ground. These images are known as nadir images, which are essential for mapping and photogrammetry applications and would be heavily utilized throughout the remainder of the course.
Figure 1 – Nadir Image at 25 ft AGL
At 25 feet above ground level, the drone captures a relatively small area with high visible detail due to the limited field of view at lower altitudes.
Figure 2 – Nadir Image at 100 ft AGL
Increasing the altitude to 100 feet significantly increases the visible ground area, though some fine detail begins to be reduced.
We continued capturing nadir images at progressively higher altitudes until reaching the maximum altitude permitted by our LAANC authorization at the Purdue University Turf Farm.
Figure 3 – Nadir Image at Maximum Authorized Altitude
At higher altitudes, the image covers a much larger area, demonstrating the tradeoff between spatial coverage and image resolution.
Overall, this lab reinforced how flight altitude directly impacts image scale, coverage, and detail. Understanding these relationships is important for planning effective UAS mapping missions in future labs.
Want to print your doc?
This is not the way.
This is not the way.
Try clicking the ··· in the right corner or using a keyboard shortcut (
CtrlP
) instead.