flight logs
study area outline
GCP coordinates
telemetry files
field data
other photos
video files basemap layers

R package with functions to help you:

• create catalogs of your images
• record your flight metadata
  
• create GIS layers of your data collections
  
• store your images in a directory structure that will allow you to find them again
  
• share your metadata and data with others
  
• prepare individual images for visualization and analysis in other applications
  
• deal with annoying data management tasks

Image metadata

• camera make and model, dimensions, GPS coordinates, yaw, focal length, aperture, etc.
  
• stored in the images themselves
  
• essential for photogrammetry

Flight metadata

• depends on the project / organization
  
• examples: name of the site, project, pilot, aircraft, flight notes
  
• not critical for photogrammetry, but essential for good data management
• uasimg uses flight metadata for i) cataloging, ii) searching, and iii) creating directory trees
  
• see also: Flight Metadata Vignette.

This will:

1. extract the image coordinates
2. read the sensor type, location, yaw, focal length, etc.
3. compute image footprints
4. create an minimum convex polygon (MCP) for the entire flight
5. read flight metadata
6. cache all the results
7. return a “Flight Info” object

You can process multiple directories at once

A “Flight Info” object by itself is not very useful!

Recommended way to record flight metadata - text editor

• Any field name allowed. Defaults:

uas_flds_oem()

##  [1] "name_short"  "name_long"   "description" "proj"        "loc"        
##  [6] "pilot"       "contact"     "uav"         "data_url"    "tags"       
## [11] "notes"

You don’t have to start from scratch!

uas_metadata_make(ptpinole_info)

• create a metadata.txt file for every image directory in x
  
• you can customize field names with uas_setflds()
  
• can pre-populate values from a template (example)
  
• open them in text editor

TIP: Re-run uas_info() after you edit flight metadata text files!

Create separate Flight Info objects if you have:

• Multiple flights in one folder

• One flight spread across multiple folders

Rename files based on a template, such as:

{proj}-{loc}_{camera_abbrev}_{Y}{m}{d}_{H}{M}{S}

Fields available:

• {i} an integer starting from 1 and going up, padded with enough leading zeros to accommodate all values
  
• {Y} year (4-digit)
  
• {y} year (2-digit)
  
• {m} month (2-digit)
  
• {d} day (2-digit)
  
• {j} Julian day
  
• {H} hour (2-digits)
  
• {M} minutes (2-digits)
  
• {S} seconds (2-digits)
  
• {camera_abbrev} an abbreviated name of the camera
  
• {alt_agl} altitude above the launch point
  
• + all your flight metadata

You can move your data by hand or with a function:

uas_move()

Options:

• move or copy images
• create the directory tree from a template text file:

• placeholders in {} will be replaced with flight and/or image metadata
  
• you can use any flight metadata field and a subset of image metadata fields
  
• the first directory should be where you want the images to go
  
• you can create additional directories for other parts of your workflow

Geometries you can export:

• image center points
• modelled footprints
  
• flight area (minimum convex polygon of all the images)

Create HTML flight summary for one or more Flight Info object(s):

uas_report(ptpinole_info)

Report options:

• report title
• map of image locations
• show image thumnbnails
• group image locations into ‘clusters’
• data URL
  
• custom header / footer
• directory where the images are saved on your local machine
• hyperlinks to download the KML files
• create an image thumbnail of the entire flight area (requires a Google Maps or Stadia API key)

Feed a list of Flight Summary HTML files.

uas_toc(c("d:/uas/ptpinole/west/march2020/dcim/map/ptpinole_mar2020.html",
          "d:/uas/ptpinole/west/jul2020/dcim/map/ptpinole_jul2020.html",
          "d:/uas/ptpinole/west/oct2020/dcim/map/ptpinole_oct2020.html"))

It will extract flight metadata fields from the HTML file for the table-of-contents.

Function options:

• title & HTML header/footer
  
• copy all the individual Flight Summary HTML files to one place
  
• show a map of all the flight areas
  
• include hyperlinks to download all flight areas as a single KML

Example: http://uas.igis-data.click/hrec/watershed2/

‘World Files’ are plain-text files (also called sidecar files) with location and projection info.

GIS software like ArcGIS Pro and QGIS use these files to display images in the proper place and size.

Generate with:

uas_worldfile(ptpinole_info)

Options:

• World File format (aux.xml, wld, or prj)
• include yaw

Output:

With World files, your images will just “pop” into place (approximately) in your GIS software:

If your images can’t be stitched, life is not over!

This function will crop each image, keeping the center part (least distorted)

uas_cropctr(ptpinole_info)

Function options:

• specify the crop dimensions in the image horizontal and vertical axis in meters

Example Output:

Not great, but…

• If the ground is flat and the features are short, might be good enough.
  
• If you’re counting things in individual images, might be good enough.
  
• If you know you won’t be able to stitch images (i.e., open water), consider flying at “zero percent” overlap and use this technique to verify you’re not double-counting.

Convert between JPG, TIF, and DNG without losing all the image metadata (EXIF info):

uas_convert()

Open images with remote sensing tools for:

• spatial joins and overlays
  
• pixel classification
  
• compute vegetation indices
  
• zonal stats
  
• object detection with AI

• version 2.0 - more pipe friendly
• wrapper functions / code recipes
  
• automate production with an Excel based control panel
  
• standalone flight metadata editor

• generate XML files for Google Dataset Search
  
• publish your data catalogs as AGOL web maps

• flight logs, uncorrected images, calibration files, etc.
  
• processed data
  
• quality reports
  
• processing settings

We all stand to gain if we get better at this.