Developing an Aerial Workflow for UAVs

Jon Skiffington, Director of Product ManagementRobert Parker, Sales Engineer

Overview

• Why UAVs?• Orthoimagery

production workflow• UAV specific concerns

• Post-production workflow• Storage and

distribution

Why UAVs?

• Autonomy (potentially)• 3Ds: Dull, dirty, dangerous• Price• Endurance• Launch and land from virtually anywhere• Potential to drastically reduce image acquisition costs

Why not UAVs?

• Airspace regulation• EUROCONTROL has adopted general regulations• FAA has yet to have a structured plan for US National Airspace

System• Privacy concerns

• Varies by region and country

Orthoimagery workflow

• UAV and camera capabilities• Mission planning• Launch, acquisition, and recovery• Ground control, orthorectification, and georeferencing• QC• Release image

UAVs and support software

• UAV providers• Trimble• senseFly• Silent Falcon• Eurodrone• Many, many (many)

more

• UAV support software• Pix4D• Trimble TBC• Photoscan• Open source tools

Mission planning

• What are you trying to acquire?

• What route will you fly?• What airspace concerns

are in the area?• How many passes will

be required?• Flying remotely or

autonomously?• How will the UAV be

recovered?

Launch/acquisition/recover

• Launch• How much space is

required for launch?• Acquisition

• Typically a grid or back and forth pattern

• How long will the vehicle be airborne?

• Recovery

Image production

• Ground control points• Orthorectification

• Corrects for surface of the earth, tilt of the sensor, etc.

• Correct/warp the image to match know ground control points

• Digital Elevation Model (DEM)

• Georeferencing• QC

Now what?

• You’ve got your imagery…• Storage

• GeoTIFF, MrSID, JPEG 2000, etc.

• Analysis• Esri, Erdas, QGIS, etc.

• Distribution• Express Server, ArcGIS

Server, Image Server, etc.