Geometrical evaluation of the UTFPR-DV building area using images of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with non-metric camera

Abstract

Nowadays, with the increase in the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), small-area aerial photography has become a viable alternative to traditional data surveys, such as topography or satellite imagery analysis, mainly due to its high spatial and temporal resolution. Thus, the objective of this work was to evaluate and compare the survey of the built area of the UTFPR – Dois Vizinhos Campus, Brazil, conducted in the field using total station, with an orthomosaic obtained from a UAV using non-metric camera, with both methods using georeferenced control points in the ground. The analyses showed that there was a high correlation between the areas obtained by these methodologies, with an acceptable error for many purposes, as shown by the Pearson correlation coefficient of 0.9991 and the relative error of 2.23432%, proving to be an effective tool for such surveys. Thus, this work concluded that it is possible to survey the built area from a UAV orthomosaic using a non-metric camera, which required less equipment and allowed to obtain the data in a shorter time when compared to a classical topography survey on the field.