Abstract
Abstract. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are becoming increasingly popular in professional mapping for stockpile analysis, construction site monitoring, and many other applications. Due to their robustness and competitive pricing, consumer UAVs are used more and more for these applications, but they are usually equipped with rolling shutter cameras. This is a significant obstacle when it comes to extracting high accuracy measurements using available photogrammetry software packages. In this paper, we evaluate the impact of the rolling shutter cameras of typical consumer UAVs on the accuracy of a 3D reconstruction. Hereto, we use a beta-version of the Pix4Dmapper 2.1 software to compare traditional (non rolling shutter) camera models against a newly implemented rolling shutter model with respect to both the accuracy of geo-referenced validation points and to the quality of the motion estimation. Multiple datasets have been acquired using popular quadrocopters (DJI Phantom 2 Vision+, DJI Inspire 1 and 3DR Solo) following a grid flight plan. For comparison, we acquired a dataset using a professional mapping drone (senseFly eBee) equipped with a global shutter camera. The bundle block adjustment of each dataset shows a significant accuracy improvement on validation ground control points when applying the new rolling shutter camera model for flights at higher speed (8m=s). Competitive accuracies can be obtained by using the rolling shutter model, although global shutter cameras are still superior. Furthermore, we are able to show that the speed of the drone (and its direction) can be solely estimated from the rolling shutter effect of the camera.
Highlights
There is an increasing interest in using small consumer drones for photogrammetric applications including mapping and threedimensional (3D) reconstruction of small to medium-sized areas, such as quarries, construction or cultural heritage sites, agriculture, and the mapping of city districts
For the rolling shutter cameras, the motion estimate of the rolling shutter model as fitted by the bundle block adjustment correlates well with the flight path and is very close to the motion vector estimated from on-board drone measurements, showing that the rolling shutter effect is correctly modeled
Consumer drones are becoming increasingly useful for photogrammetric mapping applications
Summary
There is an increasing interest in using small consumer drones for photogrammetric applications including mapping and threedimensional (3D) reconstruction of small to medium-sized areas, such as quarries, construction or cultural heritage sites, agriculture, and the mapping of city districts. These small drones are equipped with camera sensors that deliver images with a quality comparable to state of the art compact cameras. As their principal application is aerial cinematography, they typically are not equipped with a global shutter but rely instead on an electronic rolling shutter readout of their complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) sensor. In a rolling shutter readout, the sensor is exposed and read line-byline, instead of the entire image being exposed at once. This can lead to additional distortions when imaging fast-moving objects or when imaging using a fast-moving or vibrating camera
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
