Turning mechanisms for airborne LiDAR and photographic data acquisition

Abstract

Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Department of Civil Engineering, Kanpur 208016, Indiaajayd@iitk.ac.in, ajaydashora@gmail.comAbstract. Flight duration, which consists of strip time and turning time, is an important elementof flight planning of airborne surveys as it affects the cost of data acquisition. The turning timedominatesover thestrip time andthusdictatesthe flightduration. However,the currentpracticesof flight planning assume it as a constant for easier calculations in flight planning. Further, thereis no literature available explicitly on turning mechanisms for airborne surveys. Instead ofassumingaconstantorfollowingthecomplicatedmodelsofturning,thispaperadvocatessimpleheuristic-basedmodelsandturningmechanisms.Themodelsandturningmechanismsaredevel-oped by considering the feasibility of flight operations, experiences of pilots, and the availableapproximate models of turning in the literature. The paper illustrates consecutive and noncon-secutiveturning mechanismsandderivescomprehensivemathematicalformulationstorepresentthese. An algorithmic scheme for selection of an optimal turning mechanism is presented. Thepaper argues that the discussed turning mechanisms and algorithms can be combined with thestrip time for arriving at the optimal flight plan using the genetic and evolutionary algorithms.The developed approach can be easily incorporated into the present knowledge base of flightplanning.