Fly an Area Survey with ArcGIS Flight

Summary

Best suited for areas with minimal topographic variation, ArcGIS Flight's Area Survey flight mode is used to quickly capture imagery for generating a 2-dimensional orthomosaic.  Instructions provided describe how to set up an Area Survey on the ArcGIS Flight app.

Procedure

To perform an Area Survey:

1. Update ArcGIS Flight to the newest version.
2. Open the app on the iPad.
3. Select an existing project, or create a new one within your organization.
4. Select Area Survey  from the project home screen.
5. Provide a name for your mission. 
6. Type the address or city closest to the flight location. Use the map to zoom to the specific flight area.
7. Select Next → in the bottom left corner to go to the Mission Settings menu.
8. Drag the vertices (white circles) for the flight polygon to cover your area of interest. Add vertices to the flight polygon by tapping the smaller white circles between existing vertices.
9. Optionally, use Define Mission Area from Polygon to specify your flight polygon by with layers from your ArcGIS Online organization or from Site Scan project overlays.
10. Within the Mission Settings menu use the following settings to customize your mission:
    • Terrain Follow
    • Flight Height
    • Gimbal Angle
    • Hatch Angle
    • Video Mode
    • Some settings recommendations are as follows:
      • To reduce flight time and number of images increase the Flight Height.
      • Additional visual flight path settings can be accessed in the Advanced section at the bottom of the settings list.
      • Camera Projections can be enabled by tapping the settings button (gear icon) in the lower left corner of the map viewer. This displays the camera location & orientation of each photo to be taken during flight.
11. After finalizing the settings in the Flight Path menu tap FLY → to go to the System Checks screen.
12. Make sure the iPad is connected to the drone. Check one last time for any potential obstacles above and on the flight path to the region of interest. When ready, slide the green bar below the checklist to the right to initiate take-off.
13. Use the in-flight view to monitor the progress of your mission, and maintain visual line-of-sight with the drone. Mission progress will be indicated by the green bar at the bottom of the screen.
14. The Mission Complete screen will display when all imagery has been captured and the drone has landed. From the Mission Complete screen select Done to return to the project home screen.
15. For information on methods to import the captured imagery from your drone into ArcGIS Flight, refer to this article.