Operation

The ambition with the PAMS design is that it can be operated by non-specialists with minimal training. Much development effort has gone into making the whole system easy and safe to operate. The design is very robust to ensure repeated good results in a demanding field environment.

Preparations for the flight consists of specifying a number of parameters such as rectangular area of interest, flying altitude, and photo overlap. This mission plan can also be prepared in advance. The parameters are passed to the autopilot at start through a radio  link. After setting up the camera and completing a pre-flight checklist, SmartOne is ready for the mission.

After take-off, the plane automatically climbs to a standby circle at a set altitude, usually 100 meters. A command from the groundstation sends the plane on its pre-determined photo mission where it flys parallel lines and takes photos at regular intervals. The system automatically detects wind direction and strength and compensates for this in order to obtain the correct distance between the exposures.

During flight the pilot monitors the mission progress on the ground control station moving map display. The flight may be aborted  at any time. This can be done either by “pressing” a single button which commands the plane to decend and return to the standby position or by taking over the control manually using the RC-transmitter. After the photo block has been completed the plane  returns automatically and circles at a standby altitude until the pilot takes over for landing.

Image data is transferred to the ground station computer from the camera’s flash-card. A quick-look photo mosaic can be compiled to verify that the images fill the desired requirements, individual pictures are now available for analysis and field inspection. In a second step, image data is processed using advanced image processing technology to produce a geo-referenced photo mosaic ready for use in geographic information systems (GIS). This image processing takes about 10 minutes.