Public Lab Research note


Farm Mapping at Cloverleaf Farmstand, Davis, CA

by MicheleTobias | June 04, 2013 21:38 04 Jun 21:38 | #8051 | #8051

On June 1, 2013, Michele Tobias, Alex Mandel, and Stewart Long met at the farm stand at the Kidwell Road exit of I80 near Davis, CA. We flew a parafoil (Skyhook 30) kite and a delta kite with color and infrared GoPro Hero 2 cameras triggering simultaneously in the GoPro 3D housing. The kites flew over a field of young tomato plants, a few trellises of hops, a few buildings, the parking lot, and a couple of dry grassy fields. The winds were strong - about 10-15 mph - and the temperatures were climbing into the mid 90s before we finished.

The challenges for this flight were mainly related to the proximity to the UC Davis Airport. We had to fly low to not interfere with planes.

The photos are of excellent quality, but they have significant distortion at the edges because of the wide-angle lens used by GoPro cameras. To stitch them together, we'll probably need to crop out the edges and just use the middle of the photos.


1 Comments

I started going through the images and It seems like choosing the best subset of images for the map is maybe the most difficult part of making this map. I think you are right about cropping the frame, but I also want to play with lens correction software and mixing in an element of cropping through overlays as well.

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