Transcript Slide 1

GeoCam - An off-the-shelf
Imager for Rapid
Response Remote
Sensing Monitoring
Franky De La Garza, Jay Gerber, Sara Guest, Raymond Mendoza, Ramon
Rivera, Karen Villatoro, Pamela Withrow, Angelo Bianchini, Randy Doolittle
Space Engineering Institute
John Yezak, Ramon Rivera, Igor Carron, Pedro Davalos
Spacecraft Technology Center
Texas A&M University
Contact: [email protected]
Website: http://sei.tamu.edu/geocam/
Outline
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Motivation
Necessary Equipment
Comparison to Satellite Imagery
Benefits of our System
Raw Data
Producing Maps
Final Result – Remote Sensing Cartography
Map Details
Katrina Case Study – Proof of Concept
Conclusion
Acknowledgements and References
Motivation
• In disasters of enormous proportion such as
Hurricane Katrina, the Asian Tsunami, large
swaths of terrain are suddenly rendered
inaccessible or impossible to image.
• Satellite access time to these areas means
not having access to imagery for periods of
time ranging from hours to days.
• The delay in access time to imagery is critical at
the level of first time responders
• It is becoming obvious that the general
population (including affected areas) want
similar information.
Motivation
• High altitude balloons or UAVs can be
deployed in a matter of hours and provide
first responder's situational awareness
and give adequate trajectories to rescuers.
• Diffusion of imagery to a large segment of
the population looking for information is
also possible thereby reducing the strain
on the telecommunication systems of the
affected area.
Necessary Equipment
Equipment Description
All essentially “off the shelf”
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Canon PowerShot S3 IS
6 Megapixel Resolution
10x Optical Zoom
4GB SD Memory Card
Total Cost $500
Minimal Power Electronic and Communication
Circuitry
• Few Servomotors for Actuation
• Total payload 1kg
Comparison to Satellite Imagery
2nd most
fine level
of Google
Maps™
Digital
Globe
Map data
GeoCam
with no
satellite
positioning
And off the
shelf
components
Benefits of Our System
• Low cost ~$500, compared to
millions for a satellite or
satellite time
• Readily flexible to rapidly
evolving technology
• Improved technology easy to
integrate
• No need for GPS or IMUs
• Rapid dissemination of data hours instead of days
• Free of platform, UAV, Balloon,
Aircraft, Rotorcraft all suitable
Raw Data – 1600 photos
Producing Maps
• Automatic Stitching algorithms were evaluated
with the HeoCam-HASP data
• An algorithm developed by Matthew Brown does
this automatically through the use of SIFT points
and a RANSAC algorithm determining good fit
• A concept software is available at the AutoStitch
web page but we eventually used the Autopano
Pro software to produce large maps
• Large JPEGs or TIFF were then processed
through the Zoomify software in order to allow
for browsing of the very large maps on the
internet
Final Result – Remote Sensing
Cartography
Map Details
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Images taken at 112,000ft (~36km)
4GB of Total Data Gathered
2GB of Data Usable (due to TS John cloud cover)
Automatically “stitched” together 1600 images
At a similar level to the 2nd finest resolution of
Google Maps™
~200 miles imaged in 9 hours of flight
One pixel approximately 3.3ft
Primary expense (camera) retrieved from HASP
Wider area of land could be captured, camera at
20° from nadir
Post Katrina images from USGS
Using Autopano to automatically stitch together images
Example of Technology using
Hurricane Katrina images from
USGS
•You can stitch together
just a few images as
seen to the left
•Or you can stitch
together a whole area,
such as New Orleans
below
Conclusions
• High resolution maps can be put together in a
matter of hours after acquisition through either
UAVs or Stratospheric ballons using off-the-shelf
technology
• Imagery can be shared with all stakeholders
including general citizenry in the same timeframe
• Our team will continue on perfecting these
techniques and others (3d photogrammetry, other
types of sensors) by testing payloads on balloons
in Spring 2007
Acknowledgements and References
• The GeoCam team would like to recognize a few people for their
continued support and help throughout the project.
Al Luginbill, Spacecraft Technology Center
Erin Bishop, Space Engineering Institute
Jan Rinehart, Space Engineering Institute
Olivier Godard, Spacecraft Technology Center
• We also would like to thank Greg Guzik and his staff at LSU as well
as the staff at the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility.
• We would also like to acknowledge both LaSpace and NASA for
providing the HASP flight opportunity.
• Finally, a special thanks to Alexandre Jenny from Autopano
(www.autopano.net) who tirelessly improve his software to help us
produce these giant panoramas.
Autopano software: http://www.autopano.net
Zoomify: http://www.zoomify.com
GeoCam website: http://sei.tamu.edu/geocam
GeoCamblog: http://hasp-geocam.blogspot.com
NOAA Katrina images: http://ngs.woc.noaa.gov/katrina/