SENSITIVITY ANALYSIS OF UAV-PHOTOGRAMMETRY FOR CREATING DIGITAL ELEVATION MODELS (DEM)

Abstract

This study evaluates the potential that lies in the photogrammetric processing of aerial images captured by unmanned aerial vehicles. UAV-Systems have gained increasing attraction during the last years. Miniaturization of electronic components often results in a reduction of quality. Especially the accuracy of the GPS/IMU navigation unit and the camera are of the utmost importance for photogrammetric evaluation of aerial images. To determine the accuracy of digital elevation models (DEMs), an experimental setup was chosen similar to the situation of data acquisition during a field campaign. A quarry was chosen to perform the experiment, because of the presence of different geomorphologic units, such as vertical walls, piles of debris, vegetation and even areas. In the experimental test field, 1042 ground control points (GCPs) were placed, used as input data for the photogrammetric processing and as high accuracy reference data for evaluating the DEMs. Further, an airborne LiDAR dataset covering the whole quarry and additional 2000 reference points, measured by total station, were used as ground truth data. The aerial images were taken using a MAVinci Sirius I – UAV equipped with a Canon 300D as imaging system. The influence of the number of GCPs on the accuracy of the indirect sensor orientation and the absolute deviation’s dependency on different parameters of the modelled DEMs was subject of the investigation. Nevertheless, the only significant factor concerning the DEMs accuracy that could be isolated was the flying height of the UAV.