This project explores the visualization possibilities of 3D-mapped drone flight data in an interactive application.
drone data, Unity, 3D, data visualization
This thesis explored the possibilities of Unity as a tool to setup individually customizable visualizations and aimed to find a suitable answer to the following research question: How can 3D-positioned scalar and vector data be displayed in a real-time drone flight setting?
Streamwise gmbh is a Swiss company specializing in monitoring and analyzing data. It now extends its portfolio to drones equipped with a variety of sensors. To make this data accessible for further analysis or on sight monitoring, different visualizations are created and evaluated.
The goal of this project is to explore the visualization options for 3D positioned drone data, provided by MAVLink or a similar protocol. This can be done by creating a multitude of presets in the form of interchangeable objects. These presets allow to customize the visualization to the specific needs of the user within the hardware limitations. The subsequent user tests verified the applicability.
In the user tests the participants requested changes to the visualization that could be applied on site within the hardware limitations of the project. They were even able to create approximations of visual-izations initially not intended as part of the final application.
On the other hand, the requests by the participants highlighted future areas of improvement, such as changing the settings on runtime. These areas need to be evaluated against the previously mentioned limitations but can be implemented due to the near-protocol structure of the underlying data. While the implementation of the high-definition render-pipeline was beneficial for the possibilities to cus-tomize the appearance, future upgrades of the rendering context could limit the number of usable sce-narios for this kind of approach.
Project duration: 19.09.22 to 24.03.23
Effort in person hours: 360h
Team size: 1
streamwise gmbh
Emil-Staub-Strasse 5
CH-8708 Männedorf
https://www.streamwise.ch/
Adrian Drechsel
Arzu Cöltekin, arzu.coltekin@fhnw.ch
Cedric Merz, cedric.merz@fhnw.ch
