Week 5: SAR simulation at PWA

Field Report

Week 5: 9/22/2020

Martell Forest mission status: 

This week and next, flight groups will be working to get cleared to fly the M600. The leaves are expected to start changing next week and it is essential to start collecting data beginning this week. Next week we should be cleared to fly. Cole is not in attendance today due to potential exposure to covid. All notes and this report was shared with him.

PWA Search and Rescue Simulation:

In an effort to get more mock search and rescue missions logged, William Weldon supervised two groups (myself included) through a number of iterations today. William hid the “body” which consisted of a red shirt and jeans. One group conducted the flight while the other analyzed the images. After the UAV was grounded, the flight crew packed it up and then became the ground search crew. The image analysis group consisted of one person manually combing through the images and another using the Loc8 software. With the Mavic 2 Pro (Figure 1) we can collect a live stream of images to be directly analyzed in Loc8. The quality, however, was lower than that on the SD card, and we were unable to identify anything from this method through all iterations of the simulation. We were able to conduct a total of three simulations.

Figure 5.1: DJI Mavic Pro 2 in case.

 Platform:

DJI Mavic 2 Pro

Sensor: 

                Hasselblad L1D-20c Camera

20 MP

f/2.8-f/11 range

Search 1:

Roles:

                Jesse: Loc8 image analyst

                Nick: Manual image analyst

Takeoff: 0950

Landing: 1004

Body found: 1017

Search 2:

Roles:

                Jesse: Loc8 image analyst

                Nick: Manual image analyst

Takeoff: 1043

Landing: 1054

Body found: 1126

Search 3:

Roles:

                Jesse: PIC, ground search team

                Nick: Flight engineer/VO, ground search team

Takeoff: 1144

Landing: 1155

Body found: 1236

One issue we were having with the second and third flight were the images coming out dark. The first flight was flown on manual settings (ISO 100, F/2.8, Shutter 3200) and these images came out fine. The flight was conducted early and the sun was low on the horizon. The images from the second flight were taken with the same settings, but all of the images were underexposed. We attempted to fly the last mission with shutter priority at 1600, but the outcome was still underexposed imagery. This made it more difficult for Loc8 to process the images and for the analysts to provide precise locations of potential hits. You can see for these two flights that it took us significantly longer to find the body. Next week we plan to send the Mavic up for some test shots before collecting more underexposed images.