About RedEdge

    With new technologies coming out what seems like daily, the remote sensing industry for agriculture is booming. With UAS costs continuing to decrease, agricultural professionals are incorporating these products with much upside. By placing a light weight camera, like the MicaSense RedEdge on a UAS, they can collect pictures at resolutions measured in just inches per pixel. By using these new technologies it allows farmers and agricultural professionals alike to process important information for a relatively cheap price. This page will look at the MicaSense RedEdge camera which was used to capture all the pictures for this capstone project.
    The camera that was used for capturing and processing images for this capstone project was the MicaSense RedEdge camera. This camera simultaneously captures five different spectral bands allowing for customization during the processing. Along with the five spectral bands, this camera has many more unique features allowing for unbelievable quality of pictures. This camera is used typically for agricultural remote sensing applications, but is not limited to this.

Figure 1. Many of the unique features on the RedEdge camera. 

With this camera being light weight, it allows it to fit multiple UAS platforms. Another unique feature on the RedEdge camera is that it allows you to go handheld. By disconnecting the camera and taking close up pictures of distressed areas, one is able to get better images of areas of interest.

    One of the processing techniques that can be incorporated with this camera is looking at the NDVI or Normalized Difference Vegetation Index. NDVI allows one to asses if the vegetation being looked at contains live green vegetation or stressed vegetation. The NDVI uses the visible and near-infrared bands to look at the vegetation and measures the reflectance.

Fig. 2 is a brief description of what one can look at with NDVI.