Alessandro BEZZI / Luca BEZZI / Rupert GIETL / M. MARTINELLI
(Arc-Team s.n.c., Italy)
Purpose: Building an open source aerial platform for remote sensing.
Methodology: To reach the objective we did a long research to find out the main projects about open source flying drones in the net. Than we studied and partially tested this projects to understand which one was the best choice for our needs. Finally we built an Universal Aerial Video Platform modified and adapted for archaeological aims.
Results: As a result we had a flying drone optimized for remote sensing and aerial documentation “intra site”, but usable also for survey and aerial photogrammetry (with the possibility of further implementations, like GPS receiver, etc…)
After many years spent in software testing and developing (OpArch project and ArcheOS) we reach an high quality level in data elaboration, management and spreading. For this reason in 2008 Arc-Team’s research was focused on some Open Source hardware projects to increase the quality level in data acquisition and to bypass some of the most common problems in archaeological excavation.
With this contribute we would like to present some of these projects; in particular we would like to explain our experience in building an Open Source UAVP (Universal Aerial Video Platform) at a reasonable price. The UAVP is a flying object (QuadCopter), ideally suited for making aerial videos and photos. The incredible stability of UAVP’s flight and the simple and intuitive commands (it is much easier to pilot than model helicopters) allow archaeologist to take aerial pictures of archaeological layers and sites.
Keywords: hardware, Open Source, Remote Sensing, new technologies