FORMAP: A SIMPLE AND FAST PHOTOGRAMMETRY FRAMEWORK FOR DIRECT GEO-REFERENCING SYSTEMS

Abstract

This paper presents FORMap (Fast Ortho Mapping) a simple, automatic, fast and accurate commercial photogrammetry processing software for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) imagery equiped with Direct Georeferencing (DG) technology. DG technique allows user to directly geo-reference the acquisition without the use of Ground Control Points (GCP) by providing image external orientation (EO) parameters in a mapping frame. However, it requires a sensor of relatively high quality to provide an accurate EO with each image shot, which is somehow limited by the light weight of UAV payloads. FORMap makes use of EO information delivered by DG as an a priori information to accelerate its photogrammetric processing. We present the functionalities and some application of FORMap in the field of UAV mapping. We evaluate its accuracy and its robustness on several datasets. Test result shows that FORMap is robust for 3D scene reconstruction despite of inaccuracies of DG input data. It is also faster than standard digital photogrammetry solution based on SfM (Structure from Motion) approach and can provide orthophotos and dense point cloud in quasi real-time.