Methods and systems for remote sensing with drones and mounted sensor devices

A method of remote sensing using a plurality of drone devices, comprising:

• at a first self-contained battery operated device fixedly mounted to a first drone device in the plurality of drone devices, the first self-contained battery operated device including, connected by a common bus, one or more first processors, a first accelerometer, a first gyroscope, a first location detection device, a first two-dimensional pixilated detector, and memory for storing one or more programs for execution by the one or more first processors:
• capturing one or more first time-stamped images of a first environmental region using the first two-dimensional pixilated detector at a time when the first drone device is airborne;
• for each respective first time-stamped image of the captured one or more first time-stamped images, obtaining a respective set of meta data, the respective set including:
• rotational values obtained using the first gyroscope, the rotational values indicating a relative orientation of the first self-contained battery operated device with respect to a respective reference orientation at a time when the respective first time-stamped image is captured;
• and
• location information obtained using the first location detection device at a time when the respective first time-stamped image is captured;
• and
• sending, to a remote processing device, the one or more first time-stamped images and the respective sets of meta data for the one or more first time-stamped images.