Using a DJI Inspire to determine the slope of golf course greens


Introduction
This was a study to see if drones can be used to create a map of the slope on a golf course green, to aid golfers in reading the greens.

Methods
This flight was flown with a DJI Inspire one, using a zenmuse x3 camera for the payload. The mission was planned with drone deploy and the map was post processed with pix4d. The fight was flown at 6:30 pm on the Winnetka golf course, hole number 13. The weather conditions for this flight were over cast skies, winds at 10 knots from the north. The operation only took 10 minutes from pre flight to the aircraft being packed up as it was mapping such a small area.

The drone took 66 photos in a grid pattern over the green. These 66 photos were then input into PIX4d to process a map and a 3d model of the green. 

Figure 1. A sample image from one of the 65 images taken by
the inspire one in this mission

Figure 2. A map of where the photos were taken during the flight
 and a map of the flight path


Results
Figure 3. PIX4D processing the images of the golf course green





Figure 4. A Digital surface model of the green,
with red being high and blue being low

With the results gathered and the post processing output from PIX4D, in figure 4 there is enough data from the drone imagery to gather a conclusion about which way the slope of the green runs. Referring to the high spots, the red, we can see the the green in figure 4 runs from left to right as well as from bottom to top. This data is no where near perfect as it was captured in low light conditions and needs better lighting to make the depth changes on the greens more visible. 

Conclusion

In conclusion, using drones to map greens is an effective way to collect data on the slope of the green, and could provide a better understanding of the slopes to allow golfers to sink more putts.

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