Getting insights on multispectral cameras straight from the source
By: Eric Van Rees
Tags: Multispectral, Drones, Uav, Mapping, Cameras

An interview with Lucint Systems

In the latest Soar Cast, “Getting insights on multispectral cameras straight from the source”, Darren Smith interviewed Aaron Klingaman, CTO and Co-founder of Lucint Systems, a multispectral system and services provider based in Portland, Oregon. They discuss the company’s main activities, upcoming product releases, how to produce maps that can be used for measurements and more.

Lucint Systems provides modular multispectral mapping cameras for use on both drones and manned aircraft. Lucint Systems’ flagship product is the Lucint12 camera, that offers a complete aerial imagery collection system by combining an 12 MP high-quality color or monochrome image sensor with all the controls, metadata, processing and storage needed for a complete system. The Lucint12 can capture 15 fps, weighs 500 grams (19 ounces) and its dimensions are just under four inches by four inches, which means you can put it on a drone. It has onboard GPS and wifi so that images can be dumped right away.

The Lucint12 camera

Co-founder and CTO Aaron Klingaman explains the development process of the camera:

Aaron Klingeman: “The Lucint12 camera is the result of a learning process that took five years. It now combines best practices of both the consumer and professional mapping space, such as an active lens bounce and focus control. However, the most interesting camera feature is the integration of image processing capabilities directly into the camera through edge computing, instead of moving large datasets into the cloud. This way, it’s possible to do image processing of thousands or hundreds of thousands of images on the spot.”

The second-generation of the Lucent 12 is about to be released, offering a 31 megapixel version of the first version so that more images can be collected in the same time-span, raising efficiency. Klingaman now sees a high interest in putting cameras on drones. The challenge then becomes adding more capabilities while at the same time creating smaller systems, he says:

“We had a lot more interest in putting some of the cameras on UAVs and especially more of our multi-spectral configurations. We will soon release options that are much lighter, smaller and more modular than before. This means we´ll be able to take two or three 31MP and still be able to be fit them on a small lightweight drone while pairing the configuration down. Apart from adding some more options for megapixels, we’re adding more image processing capabilities into the camera and trying to get the system down to apply to a lot more types of aircraft.”

Lucint’s technology is easily adaptable to most aircraft

“To give you an idea, last year we shipped a six-band dual swath system with a total of nine cameras in it, weighing about 35–40 pounds. That’s fine for a light aircraft that’s not going anywhere near most “heavy-lift” drones. We’ve had some requests to figure out how to shrink all of that down and cut unnecessary weight out of it.”

Software and services

Apart from offering camera systems, Lucint Systems built its own orthorectification image processing system to support existing clients. This system was developed after working with both open source and proprietary image processing software for years. However, after building up a huge code base and spending a lot of time working around existing problems, Klingaman decided it was time to move on and built something new, resulting in a system that is capable of dealing with multi-spectral, multi swath and all sorts of complicated imagery datasets including drone imagery. For the future, the company plans to push it more as a separate service offering.

Full color RGB image of irrigated field during an early stage of growing season. Photo: Lucint

Just as their software development was a result of supporting existing customers, the same can be said about Lucid Systems’ service portfolio, which includes orthorectification, camera calibration, and building custom camera arrays to suit the agricultural, municipal power, and surveying industries. The idea is to help clients create image products with the data captured with their cameras. To get a better understanding of the services offered by Lucint, Klingaman explains the process of image orthorectification to Darren Smith:

Aaron Klingaman: “Orthorectification is a way to distill images of the earth into something perfectly flat and straight down. As such, orthorectification is a core technical requirement for producing maps that you can measure things off of. Raw aerial images have some amount of distortion, which means we’re looking at things from different angles. The process of orthorectification stitches all of these together and removes the distortions, so that you end up with a map that looks as if you were taking it from straight down on top of it, and, more importantly, that all of the dimensions in it are accurate, so you can measure things.

An exaggerated example of image distortion (source: Pexels)

Darren Smith: Could you give us an idea of how distortion happens versus a camera that is made specifically for mapping?

Aaron Klingaman: “Yes of course. A lot of the distortion is usually a result of the design around the actual optics in front of the image sensor itself. This is usually most pronounced and easiest to see with wide-angle lenses, that produces imagery that looks warped on the outside. When you’re stitching different images together, this is the distortion that has to be accounted for by the software.