Surveying

Overview

A survey allows users to create a grid flight pattern over a polygonal area. An arbitrary polygon, grid angle, camera settings, and other properties can be specified for creating geotagged images.

Warning: If the survey area has significant elevation variation, consider enabling Terrain Following. When planning a survey using camera specifications, the ground is assumed to be flat (at the same altitude as the launch/home location). If the ground elevation is higher or lower than the home location, the effective image overlap will be less or more than calculated. Significantly higher ground elevation could lead to flight paths that encounter ground-level obstacles. Using terrain following ensures the survey matches the desired altitude above terrain and reduces these risks.

Creating a Survey

1. Select Plan from the "Fly/Plan Tools" menu on the left of the screen.
2. Set a takeoff point using the Takeoff option.
3. Select Pattern from the tools menu and then choose Survey from the "Create complex pattern" list. The Polygon toolbar will appear at the top of the screen.
4. Select a polygon type: Basic, Circular, or Trace.

• Basic and circular add a survey grid to the map.
• Trace allows for manual polygon input.
• Each selection adds a Survey item to the Mission Command List.

5. Adjust the polygon's shape by dragging the vertices (opaque gray dots).
6. Add additional vertices by clicking the (+) symbol between existing vertices and dragging them into position.

Mission Settings

Further configuration can be managed within the Mission Command List.

Camera Settings

Camera triggering behavior depends on the specific camera and its settings.

• Known Camera: Selecting a known camera from the dropdown generates a grid pattern based on that camera's capabilities.
• Custom Camera: This option allows you to manually specify settings for a new camera:

• Sensor width/height: The physical size of the image sensor.
• Image width/height: The resolution of the captured image.
• Focal Length: The focal length of the camera lens.

Configuration Options

Default survey settings can be tuned using the following options:

• Landscape/Portrait: Sets the camera orientation relative to the vehicle's "normal" orientation.
• Overlap: Sets the overlap between image captures. This can be configured separately for Front Lap (along grid lines) and Side Lap (across grid lines).
• Altitude: The survey altitude, which is used to calculate ground resolution.

Ground Resolution: The resolution for each image. Changing this will calculate the required altitude to achieve the specified resolution.