Obtaining accurate information following a disaster is a dilemma emergency managers and first responders face. In 2006, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) approached the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) to develop a technology to alleviate this problem. The CDC was looking for a way to get accurate, real-time information about a disaster area to aid response efforts. GTRI researchers created the Mini ModPOD — a.k.a. the Miniature Modular Photographic Observation Device — a portable, high-resolution imaging system that can be attached to a helicopter to create a detailed view of a disaster area.
“[The CDC] stated its requirements, and the way Georgia Tech Research works is a company or entity, like the CDC, comes to us with a problem,” said Dave Price, GTRI senior research technologist. “We help them solve the problem using available technology and tailor the engineering to their needs.”
According to Gary Gray, GTRI senior research engineer, the Mini ModPOD consists of an off-the-shelf digital camera, a GPS system and a circuit board that uploads mission parameters. It also includes a system that senses the helicopter’s attributes, such as the direction it’s pointing and how it might be rolled or pitched, and its altitude. Before taking off, the latitude and longitude coordinates of the zone to be imaged are loaded into the system from a USB drive.
“The manned helicopter flies over the area of interest, our electronics trigger a digital camera that takes images of the area that we’re interested in,” Gray said. “We’ve got that set up so that we take images fast enough to maintain about a 68 percent overlap so that you can reassemble the images into a mosaic.”
The portable imaging system takes pictures with a 68 percent overlap so they can be reassembled into a mosaic, as seen in this picture.
Originally the CDC wanted to acquire unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) that would deploy over a disaster area and take pictures to locate disaster victims. However, Price said that following Hurricane Katrina, the Federal Aviation Administration enacted strict regulations on UAV flying so they realized UAVs wouldn’t be practical during emergency response.
The prototype has been tested in the field, and the resolution of the pictures depends on the altitude at which the helicopter is flown, Gray said.
Although the technology hasn’t been commercialized, Price and Gray spoke with a Savannah, Ga., emergency management group about the project. The group said it thought every police, rescue and TV news helicopter could benefit from using the Mini ModPOD.
The researchers also met with representatives from Georgia Power, a utility service that provides electricity to 155 Georgia counties. Price said Georgia Power was interested in using the technology to identify faults in its power lines. When a power line goes down now, crews have to search for the problem either on foot or by truck. “The beauty of the system is each digital photo that you get has an associated latitude and longitude with it — so if you found the fault, it would immediately tell you the latitude and longitude,” Price said. “Instead of having to search for the fault, they could go directly to it with trucks and equipment.”
An infrared camera could be added to the imaging device to aid wildfire response. Price said in 2007, fires kept cropping up around Okefenokee due to hot spots that were near the ground’s service. “They weren’t able to identify them just by walking up on them because they were underground, but the infrared camera carried in our POD could spot the hot spots and allow people to go right to the location using the latitude and longitude,” he said.
Price and Gray said they’re tied to the emergency management community by virtue of working with the CDC and they’re interested in helping emergency responders.
For more information, contact Dave Price or Gary Gray.
This is an example of a picture taken with the GTRI’s Mini ModPOD.
