ON FUNDAMENTAL EVALUATION USING UAV IMAGERY AND 3D MODELING SOFTWARE

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which have been widely used in recent years, can acquire high-resolution images with resolutions in millimeters; such images cannot be acquired with manned aircrafts. Moreover, it has become possible to obtain a surface reconstruction of a realistic 3D model using high-overlap images and 3D modeling software such as Context capture, Pix4Dmapper, Photoscan based on computer vision technology such as structure from motion and multi-view stereo. 3D modeling software has many applications. However, most of them seem to not have obtained appropriate accuracy control in accordance with the knowledge of photogrammetry and/or computer vision. Therefore, we performed flight tests in a test field using an UAV equipped with a gimbal stabilizer and consumer grade digital camera. Our UAV is a hexacopter and can fly according to the waypoints for autonomous flight and can record flight logs. We acquired images from different altitudes such as 10 m, 20 m, and 30 m. We obtained 3D reconstruction results of orthoimages, point clouds, and textured TIN models for accuracy evaluation in some cases with different image scale conditions using 3D modeling software. Moreover, the accuracy aspect was evaluated for different units of input image—course unit and flight unit. This paper describes the fundamental accuracy evaluation for 3D modeling using UAV imagery and 3D modeling software from the viewpoint of close-range photogrammetry.