A Light-Weight Laser Scanner for Uav Applications

Abstract

ABSTRACT:Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) have been recognized as a tool for geospatial data acquisition due to their flexibility and favourable cost benefit ratio. The practical use of laser scanning devices on-board UAVs is also developing with new experimental and commercial systems. This paper describes a light-weight laser scanning system composed of an IbeoLux scanner, an Inertial Navigation System Span-IGM-S1, from Novatel, a Raspberry PI portable computer, which records data from both systems and an octopter UAV. The performance of this light-weight system was assessed both for accuracy and with respect to point density, using Ground Control Points (GCP) as reference. Two flights were performed with the UAV octopter carrying the equipment. In the first trial, the flight height was 100 m with six strips over a parking area. The second trial was carried out over an urban park with some buildings and artificial targets serving as reference Ground Control Points. In this experiment a flight height of 70 m was chosen to improve target response. Accuracy was assessed based on control points the coordinates of which were measured in the field. Results showed that vertical accuracy with this prototype is around 30 cm, which is acceptable for forest applications but this accuracy can be improved using further refinements in direct georeferencing and in the system calibration.

Evaluation and Calibration of Fixed-Wing Uav Mobile Mapping System Equipped With Lidar and Optical Sensors

“…Over the past years, new trends in the development of UAVs, referring to sensors, involved the application of ultralight laser scanners and integration of various sensors. Only a limited number of ultra-light, UAV-mounted laser scanning systems are described in research papers presenting the scanning systems developed within research projects (Wallace et al, 2012;Droeschel et al, 2013;Kuhnert and Kuhnert, 2013;Tommaselli & Torres, 2016;Torresan et al, 2018) and turnkey solutions (Glennie et al, 2013;Esposito et al, 2014;Li et al, 2015;Bakuła et al, 2016;Jozkow et al, 2016;Mittet et al, 2016;Salach et al, 2018). Examples of commercial solutions are presented in Pilarska et al (2016), but new types of scanning sensors dedicated for UAV platforms appear every year in the market.…”

Remote sensing of river corridors: A review of current trends and future directions

“…This also enables the use of small‐form factor laser scanners (such as the Velodyne LiDAR Puck, https://velodynelidar.com/vlp-16.html) to acquire UAV‐based laser scanning (ULS). Originally, the majority of these systems relied on large UAVs (Deng, Zhu, Li, & Li, ; Gallay, Eck, Zgraggen, Kanuk, & Dvorny, ; Lin, Hyyppa, & Jaakkola, ; Nagai, Chen, Shibasaki, Kumagai, & Ahmed, ); however, lightweight systems have been developed, which can be mounted onto smaller platforms (Jaakkola et al, ; Mader, Blaskow, Westfeld, & Maas, ; Nakano, Suzuki, Omori, Hayakawa, & Kurodai, ; Roca, Martinez‐Sanchez, Laguela, & Arias, ; Tommaselli & Torres, ). Currently, the high‐accuracy GNSS and IMU systems required for ULS and direct georeferencing are expensive (upwards of £20K for ULS and ~£5K for direct georeferencing at the time of writing).…”