Experiment with remotely piloted aircraft systems imagery for dtm modelling

Abstract

The current, appropriate and highly accurate digital terrain model (DTM) is one of the essential aspects of the spatial database in 3D open-pit mining monitoring. Remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPAS), named unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), are becoming standard platforms for moving the digital camera in space and allowing for the collection of aerial images. The images can be processed using computer vision (CV) and structure from motion (SfM) with the traditional, established procedures of photogrammetry. The presented work shows the processing workflow of low-cost multi-rotor UAV platforms, capable of acquiring the photogrammetric data with a singlelens reflex (SLR) digital camera and Agisoft PhotoScan post-processing software. Regarding the photogrammetric minimum constraints results, like digital surface model (DSM) / DTM and contour lines, textured point clouds can be produced. With high-quality UAV equipment and resources, this study is focused on the feasibility and adaptability analysis of low-cost UAV techniques and their applications for 3D mapping. The first tests were developed using the multimedia Pergola fountain in Wroclaw regarding image acquisition, big data problems and data reduction. The objective of the study is to determine the accuracy of the photogrammetry output and to evaluate the internal quality control (IQC) of the DSM of the region of interest (ROI) regarding the open-pit mine characteristics.