Design of Mobius Camera Mounts Prototype A

By Cindy Li, Engineering ’18 Currently SAL conducts unmanned aerial photogrammetric surveying with the DJI Phantom 4 and its onboard 4K Camera. The SAL wants to expand its mapping capabilities to include infrared imaging with the Mobius Infrared Action Cam. I am currently working creating a 3D printed mount that can be externally attached to […]

J-Term 2018 Review

The SAL offered two courses during interterm: Introduction to GIS and Drone Thinking. Introduction to GIS As foretold by a fortune cookie, “the great aim of education is not knowledge but action…with GIS” — this year’s GIS class emphasized the pedagogical shift to how to learn GIS rather than teach GIS. The materials covered in […]

Documentary Video – Research trip to St. Catherines Island

[advanced_iframe securitykey=”5bc49ba0db168937774fd40d43b1f0f57eecc76d” src=”https://player.vimeo.com/video/212575403″ width=”640″ height=”360″ frameborder=”0″ webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen ] We plan to offer future courses and research trips harnessing drone technology.  Please visit our sister site dedicated to DroneThinking at Smith College Students on the trip included: Emma Becker Asmita Gautam Susannah Howard Anastasia Konefal Jasmine Pacheco-Ramos Emily Wert Alexandra Widstrand (co-instructor) Instructors were […]

Fly-Day the 13th: The Conclusion of “Fun with Drones”

This post was authored by Alex Widstrand ’17, co-instructor of the SAL’s interterm drone course “Fun with Drones”.  It originally appeared on the Drone Thinking Initiative blog on January 14th. As this week comes to a close, we marked Friday, 1/13, as the final day of our first interterm drone course here at Smith.  We […]

Drone Course – January 2017

The Interterm 2017 Drone Course will offer students an opportunity to learn about drone technology with a focus on mapping and image analysis to support conversation efforts.   In addition to gaining an understanding of the technology, students will learn how to fly drones safely, legally, and responsibly in the national and public airspace. The course […]

Upcoming Projects in the SAL

In addition to our regular workshops and the ten classes we plan to work with this semester, the SAL staff have some exciting projects on the plate for this fall!   Drones Back in June, the FAA announced new regulations on drone flying that went into effect on August 29. The new rules make it much easier for […]

Droning in Belize

Back in June, I had the pleasure of spending a week in San Pedro, Ambergris Caye, Belize, assisting the Coral Reef Edventures program, known as Coral Ed for short, with their marine ecology research.  For the past 14 years, adventurous Smith students interested in marine science and education (among other topics) have ventured to Belize […]

Flying Drones in Popham Beach

Two weeks ago, the SAL team headed to Popham Beach State Park, Maine, with Prof. Bob Newton’s Geomorphology class.  Bob has taken his Geomorphology class there for several years to assess erosion at the beach. A major erosion event in the mid 2000s threatened the park’s facilities and nearby homes, which were previously shielded from […]

A Low Altitude Aerial Perspective of San Salvador, The Bahamas

What do the Bahamas make you think of? Maybe beautiful beaches, nice resorts, and possibly coral reefs? I know that my first associations with the Bahamas were definitely not drones and hurricanes, but this January I got to see how these things all fit together. I had the privilege of joining a crew from the […]

Drones in the Humanities

Five College Digital Humanities Grant As an emergent technology, it is perhaps not surprising that there is not a clear consensus on what a drone is. Even what constitutes the technology of a drone—or, more accurately for the purposes of this grant, a civilian drone—is up for interrogation. Under FAA regulations, model airplanes, weather balloons, […]