Engineering Commons^™

Algorithms For The Calibration And Correction Of Texel Images Using Inertial Measurement Updates, Trevor C. Welch

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

A 3D terrain map can be developed to survey the earth’s surface and provide scientists with a method of accurately modeling terrain. Some of the applications include agricultural surveys, disaster management, and object classification. In order to develop a 3D terrain map, a sensor must capture all of the data to create the map. This 3D mapping tool can be made by combining a sensor that take samples of points on the earth’s surface and combines that with a digital camera that takes an image and lays it across those samples of the earth.

In order to take data over …

Geoflood: Large-Scale Flood Inundation Mapping Based On High-Resolution Terrain Analysis, Xing Zheng, David R. Maidment, David G. Tarboton, Yan Y. Liu, Paola Passalacqua

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Recent floods from intense storms in the southern United States and the unusually active 2017 Atlantic hurricane season have highlighted the need for real‐time flood inundation mapping using high‐resolution topography. High‐resolution topographic data derived from lidar technology reveal unprecedented topographic details and are increasingly available, providing extremely valuable information for improving inundation mapping accuracy. The enrichment of terrain details from these data sets, however, also brings challenges to the application of many classic approaches designed for lower‐resolution data. Advanced methods need to be developed to better use lidar‐derived terrain data for inundation mapping. We present a new workflow, GeoFlood, for …

A Parameterized Simulation Of Doppler Lidar, David B. Chester

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Upcoming missions to explore planetary bodies in the solar system will require accurate position and velocity data during descent in order to land safely at a predesignated site. A Doppler lidar instrument could provide measurements of the altitude, attitude, and velocity of the landing vehicle to supplement the data collected by other instruments. A flexible simulation tool would aid the tasks of designing and testing the functionality of such an instrument.

LadarSIM is a robust parameterized simulation tool developed for time of flight lidar at Utah State University's Center for Advanced Imaging Ladar. This thesis outlines how LadarSIM was modified …

Three-Dimensional Image Reconstruction Using Bundle Adjustment Applied To Multiple Texel Images, Bikalpa Khatiwada, Scott E. Budge

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

The importance of creating 3D imagery is increasing and has many applications in the eld of disaster response, digital elevation models, object recognition, and cultural heritage. Several methods have been proposed to register texel images, which consist of fused lidar and digital imagery. The previous methods were limited to registering up to two texel images or multiple texel swaths having only one strip of lidar data per swath. One area of focus still remains to register multiple texel images to create a 3D model.

The process of creating true 3D images using multiple texel images is described. The texel camera …

Automatic Registration Of Fused Lidar/Digital Imagery (Texel Images) For Three-Dimensional Image Creation, Scott E. Budge, Neeraj S. Badamikar, Xuan Xie

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Several photogrammetry-based methods have been proposed that the derive three-dimensional (3-D) information from digital images from different perspectives, and lidar-based methods have been proposed that merge lidar point clouds and texture the merged point clouds with digital imagery. Image registration alone has difficulty with smooth regions with low contrast, whereas point cloud merging alone has difficulty with outliers and a lack of proper convergence in the merging process. This paper presents a method to create 3-D images that uses the unique properties of texel images (pixel-fused lidar and digital imagery) to improve the quality and robustness of fused 3-D images. …

Improved Registration For 3d Image Creation Using Multiple Texel Images And Incorporating Low-Cost Gps/Ins Measurements, Scott E. Budge, Xuan Xie

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

The creation of 3D imagery is an important topic in remote sensing. Several methods have been developed to create 3D images from fused ladar and digital images, known as texel images. These methods have the advantage of using both the 3D ladar information and the 2D digital imagery directly, since texel images are fused during data acquisition. A weakness of these methods is that they are dependent on correlating feature points in the digital images. This can be dicult when image perspectives are signicantly dierent, leading to low correlation values between matching feature points. This paper presents a method to …

Range Resolution Improvement Of Eyesafe Ladar Testbed (Elt) Measurements Using Sparse Signal Deconvolution, Scott E. Budge, Jacob H. Gunther

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

The Eyesafe Ladar Test-bed (ELT) is a experimental ladar system with the capability of digitizing return laser pulse waveforms at 2 GHz. These waveforms can then be exploited o-line in the laboratory to develop signal processing techniques for noise reduction, range resolution improvement, and range discrimination between two surfaces of similar range interrogated by a single laser pulse. This paper presents the results of experiments with new deconvolution algorithms with the hoped for gains of improving the range discrimination of the ladar system. The sparsity of ladar returns is exploited to solve the deconvolution problem in two steps. The rst …

Estimation Of Dariy Particulate Matter Emission Rates By Lidar And Inverse Modeling, C. C. Marchant, Kori D. Moore, Michael D. Wojcik, Randy S. Martin, R L. Pfeiffer, K H. Prueger, J L. Hatfield

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Particulate matter (PM) emissions from agricultural operations are an important issue for air quality and human health and a topic of interest to government regulators. PM emission rates from a dairy in the San Joaquin Valley of California were investigated during June 2008. The facility had 1,885 total animals, including 950 milking cows housed in free-stall pens with an open-lot exercise area, and 935 dry cows, steers, bulls, and heifers housed in open lots. Point sensors, including filter-based aerodynamic mass samplers and optical particle counters (OPC), were deployed at select points around the facility to measure optical and aerodynamic particulate …

Retrieval Of Aerosol Mass Concentration From Elastic Lidar Data, Christian C. Marchant

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Agricultural aerosol sources can contribute significantly to air pollution in many regions of the country. Characterization of the aerosol emissions of agricultural operations is required to establish a scientific basis for crafting regulations concerning agricultural aerosols. A new lidar instrument for measuring aerosol emissions is described, as well as two new algorithms for converting lidar measurements into aerosol concentration data. The average daily aerosol emission rate is estimated from a dairy using lidar.

The Aglite Lidar is a portable scanning lidar for mapping the concentration of particulate matter from agricultural and other sources. The instrument is described and performance and …

Integration Of Remote Lidar And In-Situ Measured Data To Estimate Particulate Flux And Emission From Tillage Operations, Vladmir V. Zavyalov, Gail E. Bingham, Michael D. Wojcik, Jerry L. Hatfield, Thomas D. Wilkerson, Randy S. Martin, Christian Marchant, Kori D. Moore, Bill Bradford

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Agriculture, through wind erosion, tillage and harvest operations, burning, diesel-powered machinery and animal production operations, is a source of particulate matter emissions. Agricultural sources vary both temporally and spatially due to daily and seasonal activities and inhomogeneous area sources. Conventional point sampling methods originally designed for regional, well mixed aerosols are challenged by the disrupted wind flow and by the small mobile source of the emission encountered in this study. Atmospheric lidar (LIght Detection And Ranging) technology provides a means to derive quantitative information of particulate spatial and temporal distribution. In situ point measurements of particulate physical and chemical properties …

Strategies For Lidar Characterization Of Particulates From Point And Area Sources, Michael D. Wojcik, Kori D. Moore, Randy S. Martin, Jerry Hatfield

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Use of ground based remote sensing technologies such as scanning lidar systems (light detection and ranging) has gained traction in characterizing ambient aerosols due to some key advantages such as wide area of regard (10 km2 ), fast response time, high spatial resolution (m) and high sensitivity. Energy Dynamics Laboratory and Utah State University, in conjunction with the USDA-ARS, has developed a three-wavelength scanning lidar system called Aglite that has been successfully deployed to characterize particle motion, concentration, and size distribution at both point and diffuse area sources in agricultural and industrial settings. A suite of massbased and size distribution …

Aglite Lidar: A Portable Elastic Lidar System For Investivating Aerosol And Wind Motions At Or Around Agricultural Production Facilities, Christian C. Marchant, Thomas Wilkerson, Gail E. Bingham, Vladimir V. Zavyalov, Jan M. Andersen, Cordell B. Wright, Scott S. Cornelsen, Randy S. Martin, Philip J. Silva, Jerry L. Hatfield

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

The Aglite Lidar is a portable scanning lidar that can be quickly deployed at agricultural and other air quality study sites. The purpose of Aglite is to map the concentration of PM10 and PM2.5 in aerosol plumes from agricultural and other sources. Aglite uses a high-repetition rate low-pulse energy 3-wavelength YAG laser with photon-counting detection together with a steerable pointing mirror to measure aerosol concentration with high spatial and temporal resolution. Aglite has been used in field campaigns in Iowa, Utah and California. The instrument is described, and performance and lidar sensitivity data are presented. The value of the lidar …

Algorithm Development Of The Aglite-Lidar Instrument, Christian Marchant

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Particulate emissions from agricultural operations are increasingly receiving attention from regulatory bodies as a potential source of air pollution. The Space Dynamics Laboratory (SDL) has developed the Aglite system, a suite of instruments including a lidar that is capable of measuring particulate emission levels from agricultural facilities. This system provides a novel method of measuring particulate mass (PM) pollution, allowing measurements to be taken of diverse types of facilities with high temporal and spatial resolution. This high resolution allows for the measurement of emission levels generated by specific activities, fostering the development and determination of best management practices.

The Aglite …

Electronics Design Of The Aglite-Lidar Instrument, Scott S. Cornelsen

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

The AGLITE-LIDAR instrument is a three-wavelength lidar system being designed and constructed at the Space Dynamics Laboratory under contract from the Agricultural Research Service. Its purpose is to implement a novel new approach to making measurements of gas and particulate pollutants released into the atmosphere by agricultural operations. Once operational, it will provide a means whereby the total flux of pollutants being emitted by agricultural facilities might be measured. This approach is valid even for facilities that may cover several acres. The design of the AGLITE instrument consists of a myriad of different components that are brought together in a …