Favorite aerial shots

Here are a few of our favorite aerial shots:

Treinen Farm - Lodi, WI

Natural Area - near Madison, WI

Photomosaic of Treinen Farm - multiple aerial shots seamed together

Rural Wisconsin

How about this for media coverage?

Read the short piece here.

We are reaching people!

Here are a few of the good things organizations active in the UAS and autism communities, as well as individuals aware of the TATTS project, are saying about the project and our blog:

 

"Really great stuff... everyone looks like they're having agreat time." - Lucy Kluessendorf

"Nice video's TATTS team, I enjoyed watching them all." - Tim Hornberger

"Very cool... Love the home vids.  I like the one with Mitchell saying "Sky time!" - Michael Braun

 

Also, look where viewers have come from that are hitting our blog to read about the TATTS project and what amazing things kids with autism can do.  All across the world!

 

 

 

Pop the popcorn honey... we're going to the movies!

The kids have learned to fly on a simulator, built the hexarotor from scratch and successfully flown almost a dozen missions.  We've collected a great deal of experiences as well as lots of fantastic video.  Our final step in the project was to make project videos.  One aspect of that was to allow the kids to make their own movie from all the footage. 

What kind of movie would you produce if you had 4 GB worth of video footage, several hundred still shots and dozens of songs?  I can guarantee that each movie would be different.  That's certainly the case with the movies that the kids produced.  They are anywhere from 2-6 minutes each and have only tapped into a portion of all the great footage.  I'd urge you to take the time to watch them.

What amazes me is some of the similarities and stark differences in what each of them produced.  Most kids included the clips of crashing (lots of use of the term 'epic fail') and they all tended to include footage of themselves.  Who wouldn't right? 

Enjoy

 

Alan's Movie (blue shirt)

 

Kevin's Movie (bright blue t-shirt and glasses at @ 20 sec)

 

Harrison's Movie (red t-shirt @ 1:15)

 

Tate's Movie (walking with black t-shirt @ 42 sec)

 

 

Mitchell's Movie (flying @ 120 sec)

Aerial Movie Producers

The last phase of the TATTS Project is the creation of a video to tell the story of what the kids have done throughout this project.  A parent suggestion early on was to also let the kids build their own video based on still photos and footage that we've accumulated over the past several months.  Given that these kids are clearly tuned into the power of video, we decided that the suggestion was a great one.  With that we decided to produce multiple videos; a series of child produced personal videos and one official version that will go out to all the participants and their parents as well as our KickStarter supports who donated $100 or more to the project.

As with all aspects of this project, once given some direction, the kids take the project where they want.  It was enjoyable to see the kids laughing at videos of themselves from the air, marveling at the world from above and being creative with the video software.  Here's a video synopsis of their work in the lab.

We are compiling the videos at present and will post them in the future.

Thanks to the University of Wisconsin Landscape Architecture Department for providing us access to their computer lab for building the videos!

More of kids becoming the hexarotor

Here is another video of the kids working with the real-time video on a bike helmet.

 

 

 

Some interesting things popped out for us:

• Watch the helmet video when it's on the kid's heads.  Which ways is it pointing?  How much does it move around?
• When they're directing the other group of kids, look what a great job they do using words.  Lots of pointing at first but it gets better and better.
• Kids that are receiving directions also do a good job of taking instructions.  There is value in taking things literally as in "go over to that tree".  Watch the video and you'll know what I mean.

Kids Become the Hexarotor

During a test run prior to our Saturday meeting we realized that we had a burned out motor on the hexarotor... and no spare.  Another lesson learned.  Have spare parts!  If nothing else, the TATTS Project has reminded us all that we need to expect the unexpected.  Sounds like autism doesn't it?

In order to keep the project moving and still meet, we decided to mount the GoPro camera, transmitter and battery to a bike helmet and transmit the signal back to the base station.  We decided to turn the kids into the hexarotor!

One of the activities we did this past weekend was have the kids wear the helmet while riding around the park.  We captured video from the helmet and streamed it back to the monitor, recorded the video on the camera itself and also took video of the child riding.

 

 

 

Dan even got into it! 



Here's a quick video of the system and the kids.  Notice the 'ohhs' and 'ahhs'...  More

I'll post video from the bike helmet and the 'Hide & Direct' game (modified Hide & Seek) that we played as well as soon as I get time to process the video.