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Vehicle data & robotics · 37 of 40

From vehicle telemetry to spatial observations

Turn selected vehicle and sensor messages into records that preserve location, time, identity, units, vertical context, and provenance.

Why this matters

A telemetry log is useful for vehicle diagnostics, but a research or GIS project usually needs a smaller set of records with clear meaning and provenance.

Learn it

A gateway or companion application can receive MAVLink, select relevant messages, and map them into a project observation contract. Vehicle position can supply horizontal location; depth or altitude adds vertical context; message or source time becomes observation time when appropriate; system/component identity helps provenance; sensor values need units and sensor identity. Keep the raw source reference when normalization occurs.

Work through an example

An underwater vehicle reports position, depth, temperature, and system identity. The gateway creates a temperature observation linked to the vehicle/source while keeping battery state as operational telemetry.

Select and preserve, then normalize
ArduPilot/ArduSub → MAVLink → gateway → selected + normalized observation → GIS/project workflow

Practice

  1. 1Choose one vehicle-assisted measurement.
  2. 2Map each needed MAVLink/source field to where, when, what, source, value, units, and provenance.
  3. 3Identify which fields should remain telemetry rather than becoming observations.

Try it

Follow data through a workflow

Select each stage. The goal is to keep the source, connection, protocol, data, spatial context, rule, and use understandable instead of collapsing everything into one box.

Source / observation

The real-world fact, device, file, application, person, or system that starts the workflow. If it is an observation, preserve where, when, what, source, value, units, and provenance.

What to watch for

Do not let the mapping erase message/source identity or vertical reference. Those details are often exactly what make the observation reusable later.

Where this takes you

This is the bridge from vehicle systems into AtlasEvo datasets, spatial rules, Ocean Idea Machine, or other GIS/research platforms.

    From vehicle telemetry to spatial observations | Atlasemoji Learning | Atlasemoji