UAV Demo/ Presentation

Dr. Bill Kreuser Author

01/07/2016 Added

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UAV Demo/ Presentation by Dr. Bill Kreuser

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[00:00:00.090]It's a pleasure to be here.
[00:00:01.358]It's an honor to be able to speak to you
[00:00:02.867]as a newer faculty member,
[00:00:04.550]and talk about what I'm doing
[00:00:05.571]in the Turfgrass Program here at UNL.
[00:00:08.664]And Rock and Richard asked
[00:00:10.477]if I would talk a little bit about my experience
[00:00:13.223]using unmanned aerial systems,
[00:00:17.159]UAS, as it's more officially described by the FAA.
[00:00:21.805]Most people call them drones.
[00:00:23.198]So, I thought I'd do the presentation first.
[00:00:25.290]But, you know, since it's lunch,
[00:00:26.554]maybe to get everybody into it,
[00:00:28.017]well, we'll fly around first with the drone.
[00:00:30.698]Then I can talk about it a little bit.
[00:00:32.313]So, if you turn your attention
[00:00:34.751]to this table in the front here,
[00:00:36.847]we'll try this out.
[00:00:38.484]It's a little bit difficult.
[00:00:39.448]This drone is designed to fly
[00:00:42.073]with the help of GPS.
[00:00:43.877]So, when it's outside, you'd put it up in the air,
[00:00:47.105]it wants to stay within a box
[00:00:48.933]that's about three feet square
[00:00:51.013]and about 1 1/2 foot tall.
[00:00:53.760]So, it's gonna fight to hold that position
[00:00:55.397]as much as possible.
[00:00:56.755]We're inside, so I don't have the luxury of GPS.
[00:00:59.182]So I actually have to use a little bit of flying skill
[00:01:01.510]to fly the drone over here.
[00:01:02.807]So, well, we'll get started.
[00:01:05.164](drone whirring)
[00:01:06.952]Takeoff.
[00:01:08.638](drone buzzing)
[00:01:12.177]So, it's still a pretty stable platform.
[00:01:15.389]This is a DJI, Phantom 3.
[00:01:18.790]And, I'm kinda panning, saying hello to everybody.
[00:01:21.889]I'll take a video here, so they can record this.
[00:01:26.103]I can pan the camera down a little bit.
[00:01:28.567]This drone is pretty simplistic. (laughs)
[00:01:31.831]Right over Cara.
[00:01:33.005]I'm sorry, I'll back it towards me a little bit.
[00:01:35.847]Blowing everything out of the way.
[00:01:37.647]This has a visual camera on it.
[00:01:40.746]But we use it for our turf research and extension,
[00:01:44.814]a fair amount.
[00:01:46.380]So you can see, it's inside.
[00:01:47.768]It's kinda drifting a little bit
[00:01:50.087]due to that lack of that GPS signal.
[00:01:52.225]So I actually do have to fly it.
[00:01:54.118]If it was outside,
[00:01:55.766]it would wanna try to hold that
[00:01:57.881]specific location that it's at.
[00:02:00.063]So, do some very slow flying here.
[00:02:04.788](drone buzzing)
[00:02:18.294]Say, "Hi," Kim.
[00:02:20.658]No trees to crash into today,
[00:02:23.398]just walls.
[00:02:25.494]And I'll land it here.
[00:02:26.693](drone buzzing)
[00:02:34.315](drone whirring)
[00:02:35.855]So, a little harder to fly inside, that's for sure.
[00:02:37.999]But,
[00:02:38.628](audience clapping)
[00:02:39.568]we'll turn it off.
[00:02:40.310](audience clapping)
[00:02:43.327]So, how are we using this?
[00:02:44.637]Is this just a toy?
[00:02:46.137]Or is it actually something that, you know,
[00:02:49.353]we can use in our research to become topical
[00:02:53.195]with our agronomy and horticultural research?
[00:02:54.634]And so, you know, they can come in a variety of sizes.
[00:02:57.544]You can have your Predators, the military uses here.
[00:03:00.811]They're very large systems.
[00:03:02.749]It's unmanned, it's controlled by a pilot,
[00:03:05.654]and has a lot of computer assistance going on there
[00:03:08.904]so we can safely fly it.
[00:03:10.855]Even mine, you know, a computer pretty much flies it.
[00:03:13.385]I can see what it sees
[00:03:14.779]with the 720p downlink
[00:03:18.174]to my iPad here.
[00:03:19.684]But, pretty much,
[00:03:20.293]the GPS and the computer wanna keep it flying.
[00:03:22.776]And it really is,
[00:03:23.533]if I want it to go forward, I push forward.
[00:03:25.448]Should we let go, it wants to hold that spot.
[00:03:27.456]So it's pretty simplistic.
[00:03:29.092]Then there's bigger drones.
[00:03:30.347]Dr. Ferguson's lab uses larger ones.
[00:03:33.248]They have, you know, four or eight rotors.
[00:03:35.395]They can have a bigger payload.
[00:03:38.274]And they can have a lot of different sensors on them,
[00:03:41.026]hyperspectral-type of equipment,
[00:03:44.835]infrared to surface temperatures,
[00:03:47.189]as a whole myriad of uses for these type of products.
[00:03:50.219]And then I have mine.
[00:03:51.357]It's just a Phantom 3.
[00:03:52.517]It's kind of a, it's kinda in between a, you know,
[00:03:55.177]hobby and professional grade.
[00:03:56.789]It has a 1080p camera on it.
[00:03:58.399]And so it still gets really, really good,
[00:04:00.728]high-quality photos and videos.
[00:04:02.481]It's very stable gimbal.
[00:04:05.348]And so, you would know,
[00:04:06.599]there's a couple different groups
[00:04:07.455]using these type of technologies.
[00:04:10.132]There's the NIMBUS Lab.
[00:04:11.504]And their whole goal is to develop these UAS systems
[00:04:15.596]to actually do more than just take pictures.
[00:04:17.628]And so they're looking at ways of, you know,
[00:04:20.241]taking water samples in remote locations.
[00:04:23.327]And now working with Dirac Twidwell,
[00:04:27.060]from our department,
[00:04:28.140]to see if they can even do controlled burns
[00:04:30.304]with these type of technologies.
[00:04:31.628]And maybe he'll talk about that here shortly.
[00:04:33.809]And then, there's also different types
[00:04:35.690]of visual images of a farm field here,
[00:04:38.361]to try to assess water and nutrient, pest status.
[00:04:41.890]And so that's kind of different ways that they were used.
[00:04:44.820]In our Turf Program,
[00:04:46.000]we do a lot of just the more visual stuff.
[00:04:48.041]Although we're switching into looking at temperatures, too,
[00:04:51.734]as a way of estimating instantaneous ET rate.
[00:04:54.985]And so, we're gonna try to incorporate that in future years.
[00:04:57.921]But, you know, part of Dr. Keenan Amundsen's work
[00:05:00.256]is looking at Buffalograss green-up
[00:05:02.084]from different Buffalograss sessions.
[00:05:05.629]Richard Ferguson is helping with these drone images,
[00:05:09.737]and, you know, just looking at
[00:05:10.788]what grasses are greening up faster,
[00:05:12.459]and documenting that green-up with software.
[00:05:14.688]And then, you know, figuring out, making selections
[00:05:16.405]based on what greens up earliest
[00:05:18.565]and then what goes dormant latest.
[00:05:21.560]We use it for fertility research.
[00:05:23.632]So you can see different fertilizer treatments
[00:05:25.459]on this turfgrass.
[00:05:26.936]The controls stand out very, you know, very obviously there.
[00:05:30.451]And aside from these pictures,
[00:05:31.950]we can even take pictures frequently
[00:05:34.986]and then turn them into time lapse of videos.
[00:05:37.447]So we can give that to a group for extension,
[00:05:40.428]and show how a turf fertilizer
[00:05:42.485]moves controlled-release end product,
[00:05:44.786]how that release changes over the course of a year,
[00:05:47.863]through a time lapse,
[00:05:48.838]instead of just figures with, you know,
[00:05:50.417]visual quality ratings.
[00:05:52.865]This is some Tall Fescue drought research,
[00:05:55.245]where we had a rainout shelter puts over this plot,
[00:05:58.277]so it doesn't get irrigated by rainfall,
[00:06:01.480]just by our inputs of water.
[00:06:04.138]And we can see, you know, plots that weren't watered
[00:06:06.159]versus plots that were well-watered.
[00:06:08.178]Just another way to kind of
[00:06:09.316]rate and watch how that turfgrass dries down.
[00:06:12.300]Again, this is part as much for research
[00:06:14.077]as is for extension.
[00:06:15.515]You can talk and talk and talk about how to water,
[00:06:18.000]but if you can show somebody a YouTube video
[00:06:20.484]showing how Tall Fescue lawn
[00:06:22.122]dries down with different irrigation,
[00:06:24.082]that's more powerful than a figure's ever gonna be.
[00:06:28.704]All right, here's another picture, too,
[00:06:29.946]of other products we researched.
[00:06:31.130]You know, some colorants and different fungicide products,
[00:06:34.668]different drought strategies, shade structures.
[00:06:37.415]And so the drone
[00:06:38.621]gets us that better bird's-eye perspective.
[00:06:42.138]We also are using it, too, as a kind of a plug
[00:06:44.092]for our new research center we're putting on East Campus,
[00:06:47.308]'cause some plots out there.
[00:06:48.806]And so, we're just using that to scout for disease,
[00:06:50.953]scout for anything, irregularities in the plots,
[00:06:54.414]and then, you know, document the establishment
[00:06:56.662]of this new area.
[00:06:57.874]And so we started last year, in 2014,
[00:07:00.228]with a great donation from the department,
[00:07:02.550]to develop one acre of turf plots on East Campus.
[00:07:06.090]And so, here's a picture of that from our UAV, UAS.
[00:07:10.050]And then, this Fall, we expanded that into two more acres.
[00:07:13.569]So now I have three acres to do my research,
[00:07:15.960]because the water quality at our Mead site
[00:07:18.655]is starting to get pretty poor with nitrates,
[00:07:21.103]which really hampers my fertility and water research.
[00:07:24.511]So, this is kind of what a video looks like.
[00:07:26.496]It's been a little bit compressed,
[00:07:28.179]but it does shoot in 1080p.
[00:07:30.580]And see, you can kinda get a sense of, you know,
[00:07:32.390]the stability that this system offers.
[00:07:35.502]Even for video, the gimbal's really good.
[00:07:37.627]I can fly it around.
[00:07:38.926]The gimbal tries to hold that position, that camera,
[00:07:41.724]nice and steady.
[00:07:42.966]And we can get great video.
[00:07:44.406]As Rock said,
[00:07:45.090]"It looks like a camera on a wire, it's so smooth."
[00:07:47.110]Which I tend to agree.
[00:07:48.922]So, it's pretty cool technology.
[00:07:51.289]We're using it across this department.
[00:07:53.287]And this is just one of the ways
[00:07:54.470]that our Turfgrass Program is using this technology.
[00:07:58.824]So, I think that's all I have.
[00:08:00.388]Does anybody have any questions about the technology?
[00:08:02.872]Otherwise, we can do it later
[00:08:03.928]during the Question and Answer Session.
[00:08:08.073]All right.
[00:08:08.718]Fly time?
[00:08:09.741]Fly time, on this, is about 20 minutes.
[00:08:12.247]Yep, so.
[00:08:14.207]All right, thank you.
[00:08:15.071]Great, thanks a lot.
[00:08:16.280](audience clapping)

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