Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) is a very broad topic.

Part of my role as a student innovation fellow is to build and experiment with UAS, with the goal of developing a “Manual” for UAS use at Georgia State.

The manual will include both safety and technical information, as well as some basic flight instruction and guidelines for use.

To that end, my post today will consist of a pretty “stream of consciousness” discussion of what is available and what is possible with unmanned aerial systems in a University setting. I will also go over the differences in the various types of UAS and their pros and cons. The reason I ask this is, is that I have a somewhat narrow focus when it comes to the use of these aircraft. I want to know what sort of ideas you can come up for using Unmanned Aerial Systems in a University setting.

Aerial Photography or Videography is the primary use of most UAS in academic or research settings. There are many different variations on this role. Cinematographers and photographers have been using UAS to achieve an airborne perspective with low cost in many fields including journalism, entertainment and real estate. Other Colleges and Universities are using them on sports fields to analyze athletic performance from a new perspective. Governments and utilities have used cameras in the air to perform critical infrastructure inspections, and still others have used small unmanned aircraft to survey large swaths of land with high resolution aerial imagery.

It’s by changing the actual imaging sensor used to take images that the capabilities of unmanned aerial systems start to diversify. Simple photography uses a Red-Green-Blue color representation in “Natural Color” imagery, but the electromagnetic spectrum is very wide and visible or natural colors only make up a small portion of that. NIR or Near-Infrared imagery is one of the simplest to acquire. NIR light is that band immediately adjacent to red but beyond the human visual spectrum. NIR reflectivity can be used to help assess plant type or health, and is widely used in environmental and agricultural research. Typical off the shelf consumer cameras are often capable of recording the NIR band with the removal of a simple filter, however the inconsistencies from one model to the next and one filter to the next make these less than ideal for scientific research. A small cottage industry in NIR modified cameras has developed, targeting scientific researchers with inexpensive but consistently and correctly modified cameras.

Moving further away from visible/natural light you come to Thermal IR. Even though its still Infrared, Thermal IR cannot be easily captured by a consumer camera. Thermal IR is also known as Thermal Radiation or just “Heat”. Thermal IR sensors are much more expensive than NIR. These cameras allow the operator of a UAS to view temperature differences. This is useful in a number of fields, such as wildlife management or infrastructure inspection. Other than the cost of the sensors, these capabilities are essentially just specialized applications of aerial photography.

Mapping can also take on another dimension, when the aerial imagery is used not only to build an orthophoto mosaic of the land being mapped, but also to reconstruct a 3D model of the terrain. This is the primary use of Unmanned Aerial Systems for me, however I realize that many of you will have many more ideas for how to use these systems to further interesting projects that you come up with.

As for the types of systems, there are two primary types of aircraft in use for UAS, and their capabilities, advantages and disadvantages are similar to their full size manned counterparts. Fixed wing UAS look like a traditional plane or “drone” with a propeller for thrust and wings for lift. Like a traditional helicopter, a multirotor spins a propeller in order to generate thrust. A multirotor then changes the vector of that thrust to generate motion, both horizontally and vertically.

A fixed wing UAS is the go to solution for any application where any of the following are of overriding concern: Flight time, Power efficiency, Range, and straight line speed. For large aerial surveys or other long range, long duration missions a fixed wing provides a significantly more robust platform. Because the wing generates lift through forward motion, fixed wing UAS are generally unable to hover, but because that forward motion is what keeps the vehicle in the air, they are much more efficient than multirotors when it comes to power use/flight time.

A multirotor is going to be most useful where extremely accurate and precise maneuverability are needed over all else. Because a multirotor uses thrust to move both horizontally and vertically, it’s possible to ascend vertically as well as hover and strafe from side to side. This allows for extremely accurate and precise camera control in 3D space.

So, there you have it.

I’d love to hear what ideas you all have for using these systems.

So far this semester, I have made progress on many fronts, not the least of which involves my thesis research. Anyone reading my blog regularly will have gotten a taste for my own internal dialog in navigating the theoretical hurdles inherent in conducting independent research. In the past few weeks this internal dialogue has transitioned into the begging stages of writing my thesis. In the spirit of innovation I have decided to try an experiment. Today I will be writing my abstract and introduction in the form of a blog post. There are multiple points to this exercise. As the primary audience for this blog is my fellow innovation fellows, I am hoping to get some feedback on the status, intent and general theoretical stance of my thesis. I won’t be subjecting you all to the rest of my thesis in this manner, but writing the introduction first is new to me and I feel that the introduction, if well written, should be well received by you, my audience. So, here we go:

---

Abstract:

This study utilizes an integrated remote sensing approach to augment settlement pattern survey in archaeological research in the Yalahau region in Northern Quintana Roo, Mexico. It has long been acknowledged that archaeology has harbored an inherent bias towards the “center” of things. In recent years, some archaeologists have shifted to a more landscape and settlement pattern oriented approach for archaeological research. Coupled with this has been an increased interest in human-environment interaction within archaeology. The Yalahau region of Northern Quintana Roo has a long history of human occupation as well as a sensitive combination of environments. Coasts, wetlands, high forests, low forests, agricultural fields and towns all sit above a porous karst geology. Interactions between humans and the environment can, and do in the right circumstances, produce impacts which may remain detectable many hundreds or thousands of years later. By utilizing various sensors (LiDAR, GeoEye, Landsat VII and VIII, other imagery) and collection methods (satellite, aerial) as well as processing (band combinations, tasseled cap) and cross referencing the data it is possible to generate a signature which strongly correlates with the presence of evidence of prehistoric occupation. Field verification of these identified signatures was conducted to assess the “Ground Truth” of the presence or absence of archaeological material. The results of this investigation are presented together with other regional settlement pattern data in order to assess the status of a number of methodological and archaeological questions as well as to supplement regional data already available.

---

The primary question I have for my abstract is what specifically should I cut to retain the most information about what is actually in my paper, in the event that it needs to be cut for to satisfy word count restrictions?

---

Introduction:

Investigations into prehistory in Quintana Roo date back to the very first decades of the colonization of Mexico. John Lloyd Stephens brought the Yucatan back to US populations, publishing hundreds of carvings and illustrations, as well as a compelling travelogue narrative of his years of journeying throughout present day Yucatan and Quintana Roo. Human occupation in the region dates to the archaic or earlier and many very early Pre-Classic period Maya sites exist throughout the region. Maya groups still occupied some sites through contact with the Spanish in the 1500’s and many Maya reside there today. The modern environment of Yucatan and Quintana Roo consists of both High and Low tropical forests and wetlands sitting atop a porous, karstic ridge. The tropical environment makes site discovery challenging, with visibility often limited to a few tens of meters walking on the forest floor.

As archaeological investigations have shifted away from the center/site paradigm, and towards “Landscape Archaeology”, emphasis has expanded on studies of “Hinterlands” and other euphemistic terms for sites which are investigated not for their grandiosity but for the stunningly every-day nature of the findings. These types of investigations are multi-scalar and emphasize center-periphery interactions as well as human-environment interactions. For these types of investigations understanding the distribution of human occupation on a landscape becomes a key component of interpreting the archaeological record.

This increased emphasis in human environmental interaction in the past has coincided with the current surge in modern environmental research. In fact, archaeologists around the world have been contributing unique knowledge about past human environment interactions to the current global political debate on climate change. Within archaeology, this has coupled with an increase in research into detecting human environmental interaction in the past. This has also lead to a funding boom, for example the National Science Foundation has made available grants for researchers investigating “Coupled Human Natural Systems” both in the present and past and NOAA has funded human-environment interaction research in Yalahau in previous field seasons. It is becoming clear that among archaeology and environmental science that human beings can and do have lasting impacts on the environments in which we live, which can remain detectable for many hundreds of years.

This thesis addresses whether it is possible to remotely detect archaeological sites under tropical forest canopy in the Yalahau region. By combining a variety of sensors such as Airborne LiDAR, Landsat VII and VIII in addition to with previous survey results it is possible to develop a signature of known archaeological sites in the region which can be used to detect previously undocumented or unrecorded sites. I use these terms explicitly, as in the course of my investigations it became apparent that there is, in fact, nothing new under the sun. Every site which I field verified in the course of this thesis was known, in many cases long known, by the local informants that eventually brought me to the sites. In the end, they were the heroes of yet another field project in this region. Finally, I examine the results of this program of remote sensing and verification in the context of the previous field survey upon which my own research is based. Together, both the previous survey and my own remote sensing based research are much stronger and provide a more complete picture of settlement pattern than either method is able to produce alone.

---

 For the introduction I have the opposite issue. What would you, the reader like to see expanded? Also, more broadly: What questions would you, the reader be expecting to have answered at the conclusion of the paper this is introducing? As most of you are non archaeologists, I want to understand the questions a non archaeologist would have reading this work, in order to increase the utility of this research for those in other fields wishing to incorporate archaeological data into more contemporarily oriented research programs.