My First Post
Since my beginning in UAS studies, I have had the opportunity to work for three different companies in three different industries.
My first internship was for Weihe Engineers, a civil engineering company in Indianapolis, IN. During this internship, I used a custom built aircraft to map farmland for development, mines for stockpile evaluations, and parking lots to gather elevation and drainage data. The pictures were taken with a standard RGB camera, and then imported into Agisoft for photo stitching and 2D/3D model creation.
My second internship was for Purdue University working at the Agricultural Center for Research and Education (ACRE). The goal of the summer was to fly missions that would gather growth data for both soybeans and corn. My partner and I began the summer flying an S1000 aircraft, equipped with a LiDAR sensor and an RGB camera, and using Mission Planner as the ground station. The aircraft was rather unstable, so my partner and i began conducting research on aircraft that could be better suited for these missions. We decided to move forward with the DJI M600 aircraft. This aircraft was very stable, strong enough to carry our payloads, and was very easy to control using the DJI ground control station. This switch generated more consistent data that could be used by the researchers, and also improved the duration of each individual flight, as the M600 had an increased battery life. Partway into the summer, I began working with the data by using ground control points to stitch the images together. The program that I used was custom software developed by the researchers at Purdue University, and I went through each of the pictures locating and marking the GCPs for the software to stitch the images together.
This past summer, I worked for BNSF Railway and flew a large variety of aircraft. The most common aircraft I flew was an Inspire 1 both in daytime and night time operations. For the night operations, the Inspire was equipped with a thermal camera to spot trespassers attempting to break into rail cars. I worked alongside police officers in both Chicago and Seattle between midnight and 5am local. During this time we would travel to a rail yard and send up the aircraft to a pre-approved altitude and search the yard for heat signatures. During daytime operations, I equipped an X5 camera on the Inspire and flew manual missions around a bridge capturing various images of joints, overhead shots, and shots of the surrounding areas. This data would be sent back to the structures department where they would search the images for defects in the bridge. I also flew Phantom 4 aircraft to map rail lines and switches around different parts of the country. I spent the most time on the Orin Line in Gillette, WY, where during our mapping missions, my partner and I were working with a vendor testing how his UAS technologies could increase the efficiency of our mapping missions. Unfortunately, I am unable to disclose any more information as it would be a violation of our NDA. However, the company's main push was for BVLOS operations. BNSF was the first company approved by the FAA for BVLOS operations. They used a custom fixed wing aircraft with a 12 foot wingspan to fly ~5 hours along raul lines in Montana and New Mexico. On my first day of the summer, I was able to shadow the first BVLOS flight from a remote location. I was in Fort Worth, TX where the main pilots of the operation were while the aircraft was in Havre, MT for takeoff and landing.
My first internship was for Weihe Engineers, a civil engineering company in Indianapolis, IN. During this internship, I used a custom built aircraft to map farmland for development, mines for stockpile evaluations, and parking lots to gather elevation and drainage data. The pictures were taken with a standard RGB camera, and then imported into Agisoft for photo stitching and 2D/3D model creation.
My second internship was for Purdue University working at the Agricultural Center for Research and Education (ACRE). The goal of the summer was to fly missions that would gather growth data for both soybeans and corn. My partner and I began the summer flying an S1000 aircraft, equipped with a LiDAR sensor and an RGB camera, and using Mission Planner as the ground station. The aircraft was rather unstable, so my partner and i began conducting research on aircraft that could be better suited for these missions. We decided to move forward with the DJI M600 aircraft. This aircraft was very stable, strong enough to carry our payloads, and was very easy to control using the DJI ground control station. This switch generated more consistent data that could be used by the researchers, and also improved the duration of each individual flight, as the M600 had an increased battery life. Partway into the summer, I began working with the data by using ground control points to stitch the images together. The program that I used was custom software developed by the researchers at Purdue University, and I went through each of the pictures locating and marking the GCPs for the software to stitch the images together.
This past summer, I worked for BNSF Railway and flew a large variety of aircraft. The most common aircraft I flew was an Inspire 1 both in daytime and night time operations. For the night operations, the Inspire was equipped with a thermal camera to spot trespassers attempting to break into rail cars. I worked alongside police officers in both Chicago and Seattle between midnight and 5am local. During this time we would travel to a rail yard and send up the aircraft to a pre-approved altitude and search the yard for heat signatures. During daytime operations, I equipped an X5 camera on the Inspire and flew manual missions around a bridge capturing various images of joints, overhead shots, and shots of the surrounding areas. This data would be sent back to the structures department where they would search the images for defects in the bridge. I also flew Phantom 4 aircraft to map rail lines and switches around different parts of the country. I spent the most time on the Orin Line in Gillette, WY, where during our mapping missions, my partner and I were working with a vendor testing how his UAS technologies could increase the efficiency of our mapping missions. Unfortunately, I am unable to disclose any more information as it would be a violation of our NDA. However, the company's main push was for BVLOS operations. BNSF was the first company approved by the FAA for BVLOS operations. They used a custom fixed wing aircraft with a 12 foot wingspan to fly ~5 hours along raul lines in Montana and New Mexico. On my first day of the summer, I was able to shadow the first BVLOS flight from a remote location. I was in Fort Worth, TX where the main pilots of the operation were while the aircraft was in Havre, MT for takeoff and landing.
My beginning in UAS came from a thanksgiving conversation with my aunt. She told me about this new program beginning at Purdue, so I thought it over during my application process and decided to enroll at Purdue for the UAS degree. I had little to no experience in UAS before coming in to school, so I have been learning everything from the ground up.
My career goals have changed every year since beginning my UAS studies. With a constantly evolving industry, new job types are being created daily. As of now, I have two different ideal career paths: either in accident reconstruction or fleet management. I would like to utilize my minor in forensic science to use UAVs in accident reconstruction either for the NTSB, or a state/local police agency. On the other hand, I would also like to use my Certificate of Entrepreneurship to either start my own UAV consulting firm, or take over an existing position as a UAS fleet manager.
Comments
Post a Comment