Week 10: Drone Net Updates and Future Goals

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Hello Everyone! During this week, the Professor and I modified the Drone Net and set it up to acquire data with its new design.

What modifications has Drone Net incurred over since February?

The initial design of drone net includes a basic weatherproof, outdoor electrical box. The box is mounted on a regular camera tripod. Inside the box, three cameras are mounted with the color cameras arranged like a pair of eyes and infrared camera in the middle.

This design features the classic stereo camera "eyes."
The new design condenses the cameras down to one color and one infrared. The cameras are mounted at the same height and close together. This modification was chosen because closer cameras allow for quicker software processing time and easier calibration of the cameras. We also drilled holes in the electrical box to keep the Drone Net more weatherproof, allowing it to be left outside for extended periods of time.
This design puts the two cameras closer together.

The cable management holes make the Drone Net far more weatherproof.

What are the future goals of the Drone Net research team?

Since I plan to continue working with the research team as summer approaches, I have collaborated with the team in selecting goals for the summer. Our current goals include:

  1. Integrate acoustic sensors into Drone Net
  2. Integrate LIDAR into Drone Net
  3. Upgrade current optical and infrared cameras with USB 3.0 equivalents.
  4. Finalize integration of a small, low-power computing device, like the NVIDIA Jetson (pictured below).

Next week, I would like to wrap up the experience I have had working with the Drone Net team so far. 

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