Compact VNIR snapshot multispectral airborne system and integration with drone system

Abstract

Multispectral imaging technology analyzes for each pixel a wide spectrum of light and provides more spectral information compared to traditional RGB images. Most current Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) camera systems are limited by the number of spectral bands (≤10 bands) and are usually not fully integrated with the ground controller to provide a live view of the spectral data. We have developed a compact multispectral camera system which has two CMV2K 4x4 snapshot mosaic sensors internally, providing 31 bands in total covering the visible and near-infrared spectral range (460-860nm). It is compatible with (but not limited to) the DJI M600 and can be easily mounted to the drone. Our system is fully integrated with the drone, providing stable and consistent communication between the flight controller, the drone/UAV, and our camera payload. With our camera control application on an Android tablet connected to the flight controller, users can easily control the camera system with a live view of the data and many useful information including histogram, sensor temperature, etc. The system acquires images at a maximum framerate of 2x20 fps and saves them on an internal storage of 1T Byte. The GPS data from the drone is logged with our system automatically. After the flight, data can be easily transferred to an external hard disk. Then the data can be visualized and processed using our software into single multispectral cubes and one stitched multispectral cube with a data quality report and a stitching report.