Abstract
Abstract. This paper reports an experiment conducted in order to investigate the feasibility of the deformation measurement of a large-scale solar power plant on reclaimed land by using images acquired by a non-metric digital camera on board a micro unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). It is required that a root mean squares of errors (RMSE) in height measurement should be less than 26 mm that is 1/3 of the critical limit of deformation of 78 mm off the plane of a solar panel. Images utilized in the experiment have been obtained by an Olympus PEN E-P2 digital camera on board a Microdrones md4-1000 quadrocopter. The planned forward and side overlap ratios of vertical image acquisition have been 60 % and 60 % respectively. The planned flying height of the UAV has been 20 m above the ground level and the ground resolution of an image is approximately 5.0 mm by 5.0 mm. 8 control points around the experiment area are utilized for orientation. Measurement results are evaluated by the space coordinates of 220 check points which are corner points of 55 solar panels selected from 1768 solar panels in the experiment area. Two teams engage in the experiment. One carries out orientation and measurement by using 171 images following the procedure of conventional aerial photogrammetry, and the other executes those by using 126 images in the manner of close range photogrammetry. The former fails to satisfy the required accuracy, while the RMSE in height measurement by the latter is 8.7 mm that satisfies the required accuracy. From the experiment results, we conclude that the deformation measurement of a large-scale solar power plant on reclaimed land by using images acquired by a nonmetric digital camera on board a micro UAV would be feasible if points utilized in orientation and measurement have a sufficient number of bundles in good geometry and self-calibration in orientation is carried out.
Highlights
Solar power energy would become more and more important in Japan
This paper reports an experiment to investigate the feasibility of the deformation measurement of a large-scale solar power plant on reclaimed land by using images acquired by a non-metric digital camera on board a micro unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)
Measurement results by the UAV photogrammetry were evaluated by the space coordinates of 220 check points which were corner points of 55 solar panels selected from 1768 solar panels in the experiment area
Summary
Solar power energy would become more and more important in Japan. there are few suitable areas for a large-scale solar power plant except for land reclaimed from the sea in Japan. Rosnell and Honkavaara (2012) reported photogrammetric experiments by using a quadrocopter type micro UAV as well They reported that they obtained an accurate result that a RMSE in height measurement at 24 check points were 10.6 cm by using 31 control points and 251 images which were collected from a flying height of 110 – 130 m above the ground level. These reports suggested that it would be possible to measure deformation of solar panels with sufficient accuracy by means of UAV photogrammetry.
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