LiDAR-Aided Interior Orientation Parameters Refinement Strategy for Consumer-Grade Cameras Onboard UAV Remote Sensing Systems

Abstract

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are quickly emerging as a popular platform for 3D reconstruction/modeling in various applications such as precision agriculture, coastal monitoring, and emergency management. For such applications, LiDAR and frame cameras are the two most commonly used sensors for 3D mapping of the object space. For example, point clouds for the area of interest can be directly derived from LiDAR sensors onboard UAVs equipped with integrated global navigation satellite systems and inertial navigation systems (GNSS/INS). Imagery-based mapping, on the other hand, is considered to be a cost-effective and practical option and is often conducted by generating point clouds and orthophotos using structure from motion (SfM) techniques. Mapping with photogrammetric approaches requires accurate camera interior orientation parameters (IOPs), especially when direct georeferencing is utilized. Most state-of-the-art approaches for determining/refining camera IOPs depend on ground control points (GCPs). However, establishing GCPs is expensive and labor-intensive, and more importantly, the distribution and number of GCPs are usually less than optimal to provide adequate control for determining and/or refining camera IOPs. Moreover, consumer-grade cameras with unstable IOPs have been widely used for mapping applications. Therefore, in such scenarios, where frequent camera calibration or IOP refinement is required, GCP-based approaches are impractical. To eliminate the need for GCPs, this study uses LiDAR data as a reference surface to perform in situ refinement of camera IOPs. The proposed refinement strategy is conducted in three main steps. An image-based sparse point cloud is first generated via a GNSS/INS-assisted SfM strategy. Then, LiDAR points corresponding to the resultant image-based sparse point cloud are identified through an iterative plane fitting approach and are referred to as LiDAR control points (LCPs). Finally, IOPs of the utilized camera are refined through a GNSS/INS-assisted bundle adjustment procedure using LCPs. Seven datasets over two study sites with a variety of geomorphic features are used to evaluate the performance of the developed strategy. The results illustrate the ability of the proposed approach to achieve an object space absolute accuracy of 3–5 cm (i.e., 5–10 times the ground sampling distance) at a 41 m flying height.