To capture the full extent of the site, the flight mode was chosen to be a Point-of-Interest (POI) autonomous flight, whereby the drone was programmed to fly a CCW circular loiter pattern about the site's geographic center. A 10' x 12' blue tarp was placed at the approximate center of the site as a visual point-of-reference. The drone performed the POI flight around the tarp at an altitude of 50m, radial offset of 155m, and 10 m/sec ground speed. Four loiters were completed, during which time several minutes of video was recorded. Nineteen photographs were captured during the final two loiters with the camera taking photos ever 10 seconds.
Below is a GIS map produced following the mission that details the drone flight path and photo locations. Note, the basemap depicts "stale" aerial imagery taken before the site was cleared.
Two photographs from the flight are shown below along with a short video segment.
A loiter video taken four months later shows the significant progress at the site.
An autonomous, 13-waypoint flyover of the construction site nine months after groundbreaking can be viewed at Flyover at Discovery Oaks Elementary School.
