CAPABILITIES AND REQUIREMENTS
OF HIGH-SPEED CAMERAS ON DRONES
A high-speed camera mounted on a
drone offers a range of applications,
from surveillance of blast recordings
to overhead monitoring in defense tests
// STEPHAN TROST
Mounted onto UAV, high speed
cameras provide high speed
recordings of critical tests during
flight for subsequent slow-motion analysis.
Applications could include surveillance of a
blast, or overhead monitoring of a defense
test. Despite being a “safe to fly” device in
both applications, the cameras require
certain features and capabilities. Both use
cases face similar technical challenges.
Once the camera is mounted and the
aircraft airborne, very limited user
interaction is possible. The cameras must
work for the most part autonomously yet
safely to acquire the precious image data.
These cameras provide “eyewitness data” of
what has happened during the tests and
are one of the most important sources for
data analysis afterwards.
UAV REQUIREMENTS
In a UAV the camera control
is partly integrated into
or part of the flight
control system. Power
comes from the UAV and
a power draw of a mere
30 watts is not critical. A
“power up when camera
power input detects voltage”
feature of the camera’s input
makes it easy to boot up the devices prior
to starting the UAV for a test flight.
Necessary recording parameters such as
resolution and frames per second, as well
as number of buffers that should be
acquired are preprogramed on the ground
during camera setup. The camera is then
positioned so that it records the scene of
152 SHOWCASE \\ AEROSPACETESTINGINTERNATIONAL.COM
1 // The AOS L-Blast high
speed camera mounted on
a drone
2 // A built in HDMI
interface provides a live
stream of data
1
2
Cameras
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