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Week 3 - Skydio 2+ 2D Mapping Mission
For this lab, we completed our first autonomous 2D mapping mission using the Skydio 2+ on September 9, 2025. The purpose of this outing was to gain experience with Skydio’s mapping tools and to see how different mission settings affect aerial data collection.
The flights were conducted at the Purdue University Turf Farm. Before flying, we completed a full preflight inspection and configured all mission parameters within the Skydio app. Weather conditions were favorable, with light winds, clear skies, and temperatures well within the aircraft’s operating limits.
Figure 1: Map of the data collection area showing the nadir grid and crosshatch + perimeter boundaries
Two autonomous mapping missions were flown. The first was a nadir lawnmower grid flown at 200 ft AGL with a 90° camera angle and 80% frontlap and sidelap. This mission was designed to efficiently cover the survey area using evenly spaced nadir imagery.
Figure 2: Nadir image captured during the 200 ft AGL grid mission
The second mission used a crosshatch pattern with a perimeter, flown at a lower altitude between 60–80 ft AGL. The camera angle was set to 75°, with the same overlap settings. This mission produced denser image coverage due to the lower altitude and additional flight passes.
Figure 3: Image captured during the low-altitude crosshatch mission
The nadir grid mission captured 125 images and produced a dataset of approximately 614 MB, while the crosshatch with perimeter mission captured 875 images, resulting in a dataset of about 5.36 GB. This demonstrated how mission settings can impact data volume and collection time.
Overall, this lab reinforced proper autonomous mission setup and highlighted the tradeoffs between coverage, detail, and dataset size when planning UAS mapping flights.
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