Abstract
Abstract. We introduce a new mobile, simultaneous terrestrial and aerial, geodata collection and post-processing method: mapKITE. By combining two mapping technologies such as terrestrial mobile mapping and unmanned aircraft aerial mapping, geodata are simultaneously acquired from air and ground. More in detail, a mapKITE geodata acquisition system consists on an unmanned aircraft and a terrestrial vehicle, which hosts the ground control station. By means of a real-time navigation system on the terrestrial vehicle, real-time waypoints are sent to the aircraft from the ground. By doing so, the aircraft is linked to the terrestrial vehicle through a “virtual tether,” acting as a “mapping kite.” In the article, we entail the concept of mapKITE as well as the various technologies and techniques involved, from aircraft guidance and navigation based on IMU and GNSS, optical cameras for mapping and tracking, sensor orientation and calibration, etc. Moreover, we report of a new measurement introduced in mapKITE, that is, point-and-scale photogrammetric measurements [of image coordinates and scale] for optical targets of known size installed on the ground vehicle roof. By means of accurate posteriori trajectory determination of the terrestrial vehicle, mapKITE benefits then from kinematic ground control points which are photogrametrically observed by point-and-scale measures. Initial results for simulated configurations show that these measurements added to the usual Integrated Sensor Orientation ones reduce or even eliminate the need of conventional ground control points –therefore, lowering mission costs– and enable selfcalibration of the unmanned aircraft interior orientation parameters in corridor configurations, in contrast to the situation of traditional corridor configurations. Finally, we report about current developments of the first mapKITE prototype, developed under the European Union Research and Innovation programme Horizon 2020. The first mapKITE mission will be held at the BCN Drone Center (Collsuspina, Moià, Spain) in mid 2016.
Highlights
Everything has its time and each time has its [mapping] paradigms
In the first row, we present a flight including take-off and landing, initial and final unmanned aircraft (UA) calibration manoeuvres, and forward flight, including pairs of GCPs each 13 images
The performance evaluation criteria in this benchmark is the precision of the estimated parameters in the block adjustment
Summary
Everything has its time and each time has its [mapping] paradigms. The time of comfortable mapping decision making when all what had to be decided was whether to use a 150, 200 or 300 mm camera constant lens are gone forever since long. That was the time of 2.5D Earth surface models –2.5 being a rather unfortunate misuse of the non-integer dimension concept. The time of mapping in the hands of a few, governmental and/or large organisations owning and/or having access to expensive professional equipment is gone. Social collaboration and crowd-sourcing have challenged the traditional business models of geoinformation generation and further exploitation. An example of the latter is the WAZE traffic information and navigation system. There are uncountable examples for the former; a Google search for “map crowdsourcing” results in more than half million results and the term geo-crowdsourcing is well established in the crowd economy world
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