Mobile 3D mapping for surveying earthwork projects using an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) system

• Conventional surveying techniques can be time-consuming and unsafe to workers.
• Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) systems provide novel platform for photogrammetry.
• Contributions are autonomous/fast data acquisition, low errors, and dense point clouds.
• UAV was tested in scientific test bed and earthwork of large infrastructure projects.
• Digital Elevation Models (DEM) provide new information for project decision making.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) systems as a data acquisition platform and as a measurement instrument are becoming attractive for many surveying applications in civil engineering. Their performance, however, is not well understood for these particular tasks. The scope of the presented work is the performance evaluation of a UAV system that was built to rapidly and autonomously acquire mobile three-dimensional (3D) mapping data. Details to the components of the UAV system (hardware and control software) are explained. A novel program for photogrammetric flight planning and its execution for the generation of 3D point clouds from digital mobile images is explained. A performance model for estimating the position error was developed and tested in several realistic construction environments. Test results are presented as they relate to large excavation and earth moving construction sites. The experiences with the developed UAV system are useful to researchers or practitioners in need for successfully adapting UAV technology for their application(s).

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