NextGen Blog

The R&D part of the name reflects our career-long interests in the cutting edge of sci and tech. Whenever NextGen can we will certainly make time for it, but environmental R&D in Canada is a tough space to hold.

Although UAV’s do have widespread opportunity among many sectors, we’ve noted a disappointing corporate trend. Some companies are strictly technical and try to promote service across many sectors from the get-go.

Collecting defendable data on land, water and ice requires a strong capacity to survey.  Today, all types of environmental data collection require geolocation and survey. Our experience ranges from spirit survey (rod and level), handheld GPS, differential and RTK base station set up and operation in temperate, sub-arctic, and tropical environments.

Crop production can vary within and among years due to issues of land, drainage, and climate. Although crops only grow for a brief time, they create microenvironments and form habitat for other unwanted organisms, which are crop stressors. Now, your multispectral monitoring and scouting during growth and maturation enables you to respond to the health of your crops with area specific UAV spraying. This focus saves you money and limits the amount of chemicals released into the environment.

Yes. Today, a middle-ground exists between those that work the land like that of previous generations, and the large high-tech Ag corporations.  It is no longer an “all in” decision with the leap of faith, and likely, singing a multi-year contract with internationals. This middle ground emerged recently because imaging by UAV or satellite today is effective and affordable. This opened a new market to most farmers. Be assured the UAV community, with whom you deal with personally and annually, will satisfy your imaging needs without long-term contracts. If you read about ADS-B in this blog and you’re like me and do not like multiyear contracts, then remember this key point: beyond line of sight (BLOS) operations is coming. This will change the marketplace.

Multispectral monitoring involves comparing vegetation indices. To make meaningful comparisons (at one point in time between different plots, or at two or more points in time at one place) your data must be calibrated, and the sensor used must compensate for differences in light during flight. Otherwise, you can misinterpret your vegetation stress maps.

Mining operations are a clear fit for fixed-wing UAV application. UAV elevation surveys in mines have been reported to cost about one-fifth of traditional ground based surveys, and take much less time. One company reported it took 5 days with ground surveys to acquire all stockpile data before calculating volumes.  With a UAV, the volumes were known the next morning.

In central Canada, NextGen has developed protocols to monitor corridors effectively using UAV. Using 20 MP visible cameras oriented in portrait mode, i.e. along the axis of the corridor, we can collect survey grade elevation data to monitor the wire tension, the height, and encroachment of vegetation. We can also work with you to implement an area selective UAV spraying program.

This section intends to provide you with a primer to get you started, and provides references should you wish to dig a bit more.

UAV’s use photogrammetric methods to capture elevation data. This is like how we perceive distance, due to parallax. Yep, basic triangulation. UAV’s use a method called Structure from Motion (SfM). Let’s park SfM right there other than to say it works. Your UAV RGB images have a lot of overlap, like the distance between your eyes. The distance from your UAV to each of the photos is both accurate and precise. The first thing your UAV and software does is make a surface based on a vast number of distance measurements. OK. We have a distance surface with smooth transitions from photo to photo (due to the overlap). As the distances are well known we also have a detailed measurement of the physical dimension of each photo, regarded as the Ground Sampling Distance (GSD). With UAV’s the GSD is usually less than 0.01 m.