The Ideal Search Equipment that Probably Doesn't Exist

Hello fellow stolen equipment enthusiasts, I was thinking about this loader stuff again and wanted to share my my ideal setup to actually search for this specific type of machinery. I always floated the idea of using a type of survey aircraft to search for this thing but never explained how I would like to implement such an aircraft to be useful for this mission. This is purely thinking out loud but I think it's a good idea that could be used in other applications than just looking for a skidloader that most likely doesn't exist anymore.

So what are survey aircraft and how can they be used for this? Generally survey aircraft have various sensors that can be installed depending on what data needs to be gathered. This can be used to gather visible light, IR, Lidar, etc. Usually that data gathered will be built it into a map using software to stitch individual photos together taken by the aircraft. This works good for mapping areas but I think you could design something that's a little more purpose built to search for something.

There is not a lot information out there on how these systems work but I think I could give a quick idea for how it could be used for this search. I believe for the accuracy needed for this task the camera sensor would need to be at an angle to capture both the top and side(s) of a possible skidloader. This is similar to the angles that I normally take with a hand held camera. The camera would have to be a fairly high resolution and have a wide enough field of view to cover a large area to keep the grid pattern being flown by the aircraft reasonable. Another important part to this system would be the computer to run the sensor. Some simple programming could use gps to take timed photos as the flight progresses. The gps would geotag each photo taken and provide timing for each photo whether it be distance based or precisely timed while accounting for ground speed. The final part of this process would be using AI to analyze the photos. Basically have it do a captcha and ask it "Which of these photos contain skidloaders" and then have it reviewed by a person. If a person finds a skidloader they could look at where the aircraft was when it was taken and use satellite imagery to find the location where the loader was and then follow up from there.

Like I said this is completely thinking out loud and I don't know of anything that can do exactly what I'm proposing. This would take a lot of development for software and what I think would be challenging, the hardware. Sensors are very expensive and to fit them to a suitable aircraft would also be expensive. My guess would be a minimum of 500,000 to just to obtain the hardware and aircraft. From there I have no idea, the about of labor and man hours to basically design something possibly from scratch is a toss up but it probably wouldn't be terrible.

This whole system is prone to the same issues I've mentioned a billion times with using aircraft and would need some serious proof of concept accomplished. Especially using AI to search photos for skidloaders--it seems simple enough but could have some hang ups.

Just something I wanted to share in honor of this subreddit reaching one year of its so far pointless existence lol.

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