Abstract
The use of UAVs finds application in a variety of fields, among which are the small scale surveys for environmental protection application. In this frame some experimental tests were carried out at Politecnico di Milano to assess metric accuracies of images acquired by UAVs and derived photogrammetric products. A block of 5 strips and 49 photos was taken by fixed wing system SenseFly, carrying a camera Canon Ixus 220HS on a rural area included in an Italian Park. Images are processed through bundle adjustment, automatic DEM extraction and orthoimages production steps with several software packages, with the aim to evaluate their characteristics, capabilities and weaknesses. The software packages tested were Erdas-LPS, EyeDEA (University of Parma), Agisoft Photoscan, Pix4UAV, PhotoModeler Scanner. For the georeferencing of the block 16 pre-signalized ground control points were surveyed in the area through GPS (NRTK survey). Comparison of results is given in terms of differences among orientation parameters and their accuracies. Moreover, comparisons among different digital surface models are evaluated. Furthermore, exterior orientation parameters, image points and ground points coordinates, obtained by the various software packages, were used as initial values in a comparative adjustment made by scientific in-house software. Paper confirms that computer vision software are faster in computation and, even if their main goal is not to pursue high accuracy in points coordinates determination, they seems to produce results comparable to those obtainable with standard photogrammetric approach. Agisoft Photoscan seems in this case to yield the best results in terms of quality of photogrammetric products.
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Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Dr Riccardo Roncella for providing the software EyeDEA and Terradat company, owned by Paolo Dosso, who performed the flight with SenseFly System.
The project has been sponsored by Regione Lombardia (Italy)
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Communicated by: M. Scaioni
Published in the Special Issue Application of Surveying in Land Management with Guest Editors Dr. Marco Scaioni and Dr. Maurício Roberto Veronez.
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Sona, G., Pinto, L., Pagliari, D. et al. Experimental analysis of different software packages for orientation and digital surface modelling from UAV images. Earth Sci Inform 7, 97–107 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12145-013-0142-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12145-013-0142-2