The second annual ASPRS UAS Technical Demonstration and Symposium was held in Reno, NV last week (ASPRS and UAS, being short for American Society of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, and Unmanned Aerial Systems).  This event successfully included a number of very good presentations and a demonstration of UAS technology; however, I felt that interacting with the various UAS vendors at the symposium was truly the highlight of the event. 

UAS technology is largely being pushed by public demand, however devices for scientific exploration and surveying are also progressing significantly.  One such example is MicaSense's RedEdge five band multispectral camera for UAS.  What makes this camera so special is that it collects its image data from five nicely discrete portions of the electromagnetic spectrum.  This clean and calibrated spectral response function eliminates spectral contamination by adjacent colors or wavelengths common in nearly all consumer cameras (see the attached image below).  If properly executed the resulting output of such a camera can be confidently converted to reflectance and precisely compared with other collection dates.  Along with the capacity of this camera to precisely measure red and near infrared bands for a normalized different vegetation index, this camera only weighs 150 grams and can capture one 12-bit raw image per second.  Together these traits make this a very promising tool for future UAS applications in agricultural.