The Imaging Systems subteam is primarily responsible for the acquisition and management of aerial images taken during flight. Our onboard system contains software for controlling the plane’s gimbal and camera, scheduling image capture, and pairing images with relevant telemetry data. Our ground server communicates with the onboard system to transfer images to the ground, and we manage a frontend to display mission information and images acquired from the plane for manual detection.

Ground Server

Handles image transmission, geolocation, tagging, and distribution to other systems. Think of it as a central hub on the ground, sending commands to and receiving images from the plane, and distributing information to other systems.

All!

Plane System

The plane system runs on our onboard computer handling image capture, gimbal control, and telemetry recording. The plane system communicates with the ground server, receiving commands to take images or point the gimbal, and responds with images and telemetry data.

Amin
Caroline

Mission Progress Page

An extension of the ground server frontend that displays a live status of the current mission. This includes live footage from our onboard auxiliary cameras, as well as key metrics such as the number of images received/processed, total target sightings, regions of interest, and much more valuable information.

Caitlien
Sophia
Caroline

Plane System Modes

Plane system modes control the behavior of the camera and the gimbal corresponding to different stages of flight/competition. Examples include

Amin
Caroline

ROI Scheduling

Region of Interest (ROI) scheduling is an attempt at capturing higher quality images of targets. After flying over the search area, we identify regions of interest where we expect there to be targets. Taking these estimated locations, we zoom the camera closer to the ground and attempt to track these regions with our gimbal.