The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences
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Articles | Volume XXXVIII-1/C22
https://doi.org/10.5194/isprsarchives-XXXVIII-1-C22-155-2011
https://doi.org/10.5194/isprsarchives-XXXVIII-1-C22-155-2011
06 Sep 2012
 | 06 Sep 2012

AERIAL SURVEYING UAV BASED ON OPEN-SOURCE HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE

J. Mészáros

Keywords: UAVs, Photogrammetry, Robotics, IMU, Mapping

Abstract. In the last years the functionality and type of UAV-systems increased fast, but unfortunately these systems are hardly available for researchers in some cases. A simple and low-cost solution was developed to build an autonomous aerial surveying airplane, which can fulfil the necessities (aerial photographs with very-high resolution) of other departments at the university and very useful and practical for teaching photogrammetry..
The base was a commercial, remote controlled model airplane and an open-source GPS/IMU system (MatrixPilot) was adapted to achieve the semi-automatic or automatic stabilization and navigation of the model airplane along predefined trajectory. The firmware is completely open-source and easily available on the website of the project.
The first used camera system was a low-budget, low-quality video camera, which could provide only 1.2 megapixel photographs or low resolution video depending on the light conditions and the desired spatial resolution.
A field measurement test was carried out with the described system: the aerial surveying of an undiscovered archaeological site, signed by a crop-mark in mountain Pilis (Hungary).