BBC Coast uses sUAS to map Roman Harbour.
The COAST team descended on the UK’s Yorkshire coastline during the lowest forecast tides of the year to examine what is thought to be the remnants of a Roman Harbour, jutting out from Filey Brigg. The Brigg is rocky spit protruding out to sea that is regularly washed by high seas. The Filey Brigg research Group have been investigating the harbour for decades and have a wealth of information, but have never succeeded in achieving good quality aerial imagery to complete the findings. The group also wants to create a 3D image that ties in aerial, sonar, lidar and subterranean imagery.
Nigel King of Blue River Studios was brought in to do the aerial imagery with his small drone (1.9Kg, 60” wingspan)– the objective being to capture the harbour remnants in very high resolution (down to 0.1 cm) image mosaic that would view also show the whole area of the harbour in the same image.
Despite battling mountainous seas, high winds and just a spit of rocks to take off and land on, the crew flew four sorties over the area of interest and returned just the kind of imaging that the BBC wanted to see from a UAV.
The Coast crew were very excited about seeing what the UAV could do, how versatile it was and the level of detail it could return from such a small aircraft.
Ultimately the footage of the flights, interviews and results will be viewing on prime time TV in July 2012, on BBC’s “Coast” series.
