Large scale topographic mapping based on unmanned aerial vehicle and aerial photogrammetric technique

Abstract

Geographic information can be converted into plan of two dimensional (2D) using tacheometric technique and total station instrumentation in the field of geoinformation. Aerial photogrammetric technique can produced topographic and thematic maps in 2D. Three Dimensional (3D) model and 2D map can be generated from photogrammetry technique using 3D stereomodel. Nowadays, various technique available in generating 2D map and the needs of 2D maps have increase in various fields such as civil engineering, town planning, archaeology, architecture, and others. Aerial photogrammetry method can be used to generate 2D map of the earth surface. Several photogrammetric softwares are available in the market for processing Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) data that provide different accuracy to generate 2D map such as Ensomosaic, Pix4D, Agisoft Photoscan, Correlatorand others. The paper will be focusing on the use of UAV and aerial photogrammetric technique to effectively generate large scale topographic map (2D) of Universiti Teknologi Malaysia campus, Johor Bahru, Malaysia. The software used are Agisoft Photoscan and AutoCAD Map. The processing procedure is briefly described in this paper. The results obtained from these software were compared with ground survey measurement. The results showed that an accuracy of sub-meter could be obtained from the Agisoft Photoscan software. As conclusion, accurate large scale topographic map could be produced within short period using photogrammetry software less than a week depending on the area and the combination of UAV and the software provide can be employed for geoinformation and various fields.