To start off the Fall 2015 semester, the platform sub-team decided to build on past semester's progress and modify the camera to be Infrared or IR capable.
To obtain an IR filter the team decided to modify the currently owned camera for both financial and practical reasons. An IR camera is extremely expensive to purchase. If the team were to obtain an IR camera it would stress the UAV decreasing its flight time due to its weight. The current camera the UAV uses is fairly light and usable, but the team has made an order to purchase an even lighter camera.
The reasoning behind using an IR filter camera is for the benefits it provides over using normal pictures which use a Red Green Blue filter or RGB. One benefit is how shadows do not affect images taken with IR over RGB. When analyzing RGB it is sometimes harder to distinguish items due to shadow. In the above image one can clearly see how the IR can distinguish between vegetation and structures like roads and sidewalks.
