LOC8

Introduction
LOC8 is a software that processes images and identifies pixels that are in a color range. This is primary being used in search and rescue, but has its applications in other uses. In this lab LOC8 was used to view images that were taken over an area, and the goal was to find a pair of jeans, and a skeleton in a flannel shirt.

Methods
The first thing was to set up the settings of the LOC8 software, these software settings allow the ability to fine tune the software to get it to identify what you want to find.

Figure 1. LOC8 Settings
Then once the base settings were setup I set up a color range for the LOC8 software to find. Figure 2 shows the color range that was used. This color range was used as it covered a range that the jeans were expected to show up as.
Figure 2. LOC8 jeans color range 
Then the images were processed and a few images were found. The jeans were in one of the targets after some time changing the settings to search different parts of the blue spectrum.
Figure 3. LOC8 image with jeans in target, the jeans are in the top right red circle
The jeans were found and they are in the top right of figure 3. You may have noticed that there are other circles in the image, these are from other blue pixels in the image, these can be shadows or other objects like the truck in the bottom left of figure 3.

The next target "Bones" the skeleton was not found using loc8, but was found by squinting, looking through the pictures one by one, as he was hidden in the shadows, so his original color values of his shirt did not match the images color values.
Figure 4. Bones the skeleton is in the red circle
  Discussion
In a relatively small photo set, squinting may be better than using loc8, as getting the settings to find the proper pixels can be hard at times, and it can be much faster to just visually search the images. LOC8 has its place in large data sets as it can narrow down the photos to identify only the color band that the searcher wants to see in the images. In the future LOC8 will probably be better than loc8 for more sets of images decreasing in number as it gets more accurate and easier to get a color band to search for. 
Conclusion
In conclusion software like loc8 will play a large part in drone search and rescue, and it will also be used for other applications going forward and will make a large improvement on drone image data processing.

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