Small unmanned aerial systems (sUAS) for civil remote sensing applications are becoming ubiquitous for scientific insight about targets such as micro-agriculture, invasive species monitoring, and environmental survey applications. For the upcoming generation of beyond visual-line-of-sight (BVLOS) capable sUAS, a flexible, robust, and high-performance payload management and data collection software is required. In this paper, a high-rate, accurate, multispectral, modular, payload control software (“AggieCap3”) for such BVLOS sUAS is described, including system requirements, architecture, implementation, and results from both fixed- and rotary-wing craft, demonstrating the systems applicability for civilian scientific aerial remote sensing.

Date Published: 14 May 2019
PDF: 8 pages
Proc. SPIE 11008, Autonomous Air and Ground Sensing Systems for Agricultural Optimization and Phenotyping IV, 1100809 (14 May 2019); doi: 10.1117/12.2519164

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 11008:
Autonomous Air and Ground Sensing Systems for Agricultural Optimization and Phenotyping IV
J. Alex Thomasson; Mac McKee; Robert J. Moorhead, Editor(s)