Mobile 3D mapping for surveying earthwork projects using an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) system
TL;DR: The performance evaluation of a UAV system that was built to rapidly and autonomously acquire mobile three-dimensional mapping data and its execution for the generation of 3D point clouds from digital mobile images is presented.
About: This article is published in Automation in Construction.The article was published on 2014-05-01. It has received 661 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Flight planning.
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TL;DR: An overview of different areas of remote sensing applications based on unmanned aerial platforms equipped with a set of specific sensors and instruments is presented, each independent from the others so that the reader does not need to read the full paper when a specific application is of interest.
Abstract: Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA) is presently in continuous development at a rapid pace. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) or more extensively Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) are platforms considered under the RPAs paradigm. Simultaneously, the development of sensors and instruments to be installed onboard such platforms is growing exponentially. These two factors together have led to the increasing use of these platforms and sensors for remote sensing applications with new potential. Thus, the overall goal of this paper is to provide a panoramic overview about the current status of remote sensing applications based on unmanned aerial platforms equipped with a set of specific sensors and instruments. First, some examples of typical platforms used in remote sensing are provided. Second, a description of sensors and technologies is explored which are onboard instruments specifically intended to capture data for remote sensing applications. Third, multi-UAVs in collaboration, coordination, and cooperation in remote sensing are considered. Finally, a collection of applications in several areas are proposed, where the combination of unmanned platforms and sensors, together with methods, algorithms, and procedures provide the overview in very different remote sensing applications. This paper presents an overview of different areas, each independent from the others, so that the reader does not need to read the full paper when a specific application is of interest
587 citations
19 May 2016
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a review of the state of the art on using Structure-from-Motion (SfM) workflows in geomorphometry and give an overview of terms and fields of application.
Abstract: . Photogrammetry and geosciences have been closely linked since the late 19th century due to the acquisition of high-quality 3-D data sets of the environment, but it has so far been restricted to a limited range of remote sensing specialists because of the considerable cost of metric systems for the acquisition and treatment of airborne imagery. Today, a wide range of commercial and open-source software tools enable the generation of 3-D and 4-D models of complex geomorphological features by geoscientists and other non-experts users. In addition, very recent rapid developments in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technology allow for the flexible generation of high-quality aerial surveying and ortho-photography at a relatively low cost. The increasing computing capabilities during the last decade, together with the development of high-performance digital sensors and the important software innovations developed by computer-based vision and visual perception research fields, have extended the rigorous processing of stereoscopic image data to a 3-D point cloud generation from a series of non-calibrated images. Structure-from-motion (SfM) workflows are based upon algorithms for efficient and automatic orientation of large image sets without further data acquisition information, examples including robust feature detectors like the scale-invariant feature transform for 2-D imagery. Nevertheless, the importance of carrying out well-established fieldwork strategies, using proper camera settings, ground control points and ground truth for understanding the different sources of errors, still needs to be adapted in the common scientific practice. This review intends not only to summarise the current state of the art on using SfM workflows in geomorphometry but also to give an overview of terms and fields of application. Furthermore, this article aims to quantify already achieved accuracies and used scales, using different strategies in order to evaluate possible stagnations of current developments and to identify key future challenges. It is our belief that some lessons learned from former articles, scientific reports and book chapters concerning the identification of common errors or "bad practices" and some other valuable information may help in guiding the future use of SfM photogrammetry in geosciences.
389 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the benefits of drone remote sensing include low material and operational costs, flexible control of spatial and temporal resolution, high-intensity data collection, and the absence of risk to crews.
Abstract: Drones of various shapes, sizes, and functionalities have emerged over the past few decades, and their civilian applications are becoming increasingly appealing. Flexible, low-cost, and high-resolution remote sensing systems that use drones as platforms are important for filling data gaps and supplementing the capabilities of crewed/manned aircraft and satellite remote sensing systems. Here, we refer to this growing remote sensing initiative as drone remote sensing and explain its unique advantages in forestry research and practices. Furthermore, we summarize the various approaches of drone remote sensing to surveying forests, mapping canopy gaps, measuring forest canopy height, tracking forest wildfires, and supporting intensive forest management. The benefits of drone remote sensing include low material and operational costs, flexible control of spatial and temporal resolution, high-intensity data collection, and the absence of risk to crews. The current forestry applications of drone remote sensing are still at an experimental stage, but they are expected to expand rapidly. To better guide the development of drone remote sensing for sustainable forestry, it is important to systematically and continuously conduct comparative studies to determine the appropriate drone remote sensing technologies for various forest conditions and/or forestry applications.
388 citations
Cites background from "Mobile 3D mapping for surveying ear..."
...…of Forestry and Natural Resources, Purdue University, 715 West State Street, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA cover mapping (Zhu and Evans 1994; Shao et al. 1996) to hyperspectral data-based biophysical forest estimations (Martin and Aber 1997; Treitz and Howarth 1999), and from passive remote…...
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...Keywords Drone Remote sensing UAV UAS UA RPA Forest...
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TL;DR: The most relevant works from Civil Engineering, Computer Vision, and Robotics communities are presented and compared in terms of their potential to lead to automatic construction monitoring and civil infrastructure condition assessment.
Abstract: Over the past few years, the application of camera-equipped Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for visually monitoring construction and operation of buildings, bridges, and other types of civil infrastructure systems has exponentially grown. These platforms can frequently survey construction sites, monitor work-in-progress, create documents for safety, and inspect existing structures, particularly for hard-to-reach areas. The purpose of this paper is to provide a concise review of the most recent methods that streamline collection, analysis, visualization, and communication of the visual data captured from these platforms, with and without using Building Information Models (BIM) as a priori information. Specifically, the most relevant works from Civil Engineering, Computer Vision, and Robotics communities are presented and compared in terms of their potential to lead to automatic construction monitoring and civil infrastructure condition assessment.
378 citations
Cites background or methods from "Mobile 3D mapping for surveying ear..."
...…can be applied to visual data for construction performance monitoring and civil infrastructure dez Galarreta et al. 2015; Kerle 2999; Qin 2014; Siebert & Teizer 2014; ang & Elaksher 2012; Zollmann et al. 2014)) mann 2999; Fiorillo et al. 2012; Gao et al. 2011; Kluckner et al. 2011; felscheid…...
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...…and N (Michael et al. 2014) ge detection for identifying N (Eschmann 2999) ra system mounted on the Y (Xie et al. 2012) or PhotoScan software N (Siebert & Teizer 2014) tion and Orthophoto N (Fiorillo et al. 2012) under different environmental N (Gheisari et al. 2014; Irizarry et al.…...
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TL;DR: An exploratory investigation of UAV regulations on the global scale, including a thorough literature review and a comparative analysis of national regulatory frameworks, reveals distinct variations in all the compared variables.
Abstract: UAVs—unmanned aerial vehicles—facilitate data acquisition at temporal and spatial scales that still remain unachievable for traditional remote sensing platforms. However, current legal frameworks that regulate UAVs present significant barriers to research and development. To highlight the importance, impact, and diversity of UAV regulations, this paper provides an exploratory investigation of UAV regulations on the global scale. For this, the methodological approach consists of a research synthesis of UAV regulations, including a thorough literature review and a comparative analysis of national regulatory frameworks. Similarities and contrasting elements in the various national UAV regulations are explored including their statuses from the perspectives of past, present, and future trends. Since the early 2000s, countries have gradually established national legal frameworks. Although all UAV regulations have one common goal—minimizing the risks to other airspace users and to both people and property on the ground—the results reveal distinct variations in all the compared variables. Furthermore, besides the clear presence of legal frameworks, market forces such as industry design standards and reliable information about UAVs as public goods are expected to shape future developments.
377 citations
References
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TL;DR: This paper presents a method for extracting distinctive invariant features from images that can be used to perform reliable matching between different views of an object or scene and can robustly identify objects among clutter and occlusion while achieving near real-time performance.
Abstract: This paper presents a method for extracting distinctive invariant features from images that can be used to perform reliable matching between different views of an object or scene. The features are invariant to image scale and rotation, and are shown to provide robust matching across a substantial range of affine distortion, change in 3D viewpoint, addition of noise, and change in illumination. The features are highly distinctive, in the sense that a single feature can be correctly matched with high probability against a large database of features from many images. This paper also describes an approach to using these features for object recognition. The recognition proceeds by matching individual features to a database of features from known objects using a fast nearest-neighbor algorithm, followed by a Hough transform to identify clusters belonging to a single object, and finally performing verification through least-squares solution for consistent pose parameters. This approach to recognition can robustly identify objects among clutter and occlusion while achieving near real-time performance.
46,906 citations
"Mobile 3D mapping for surveying ear..." refers background in this paper
...A detailed review on how to generate 3D point clouds from photo imagery can be found in related literature by Lowe [25] and Snavely et al....
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TL;DR: A novel algorithm for multiview stereopsis that outputs a dense set of small rectangular patches covering the surfaces visible in the images, which outperforms all others submitted so far for four out of the six data sets.
Abstract: This paper proposes a novel algorithm for multiview stereopsis that outputs a dense set of small rectangular patches covering the surfaces visible in the images. Stereopsis is implemented as a match, expand, and filter procedure, starting from a sparse set of matched keypoints, and repeatedly expanding these before using visibility constraints to filter away false matches. The keys to the performance of the proposed algorithm are effective techniques for enforcing local photometric consistency and global visibility constraints. Simple but effective methods are also proposed to turn the resulting patch model into a mesh which can be further refined by an algorithm that enforces both photometric consistency and regularization constraints. The proposed approach automatically detects and discards outliers and obstacles and does not require any initialization in the form of a visual hull, a bounding box, or valid depth ranges. We have tested our algorithm on various data sets including objects with fine surface details, deep concavities, and thin structures, outdoor scenes observed from a restricted set of viewpoints, and "crowded" scenes where moving obstacles appear in front of a static structure of interest. A quantitative evaluation on the Middlebury benchmark [1] shows that the proposed method outperforms all others submitted so far for four out of the six data sets.
2,863 citations
TL;DR: This paper presents structure-from-motion and image-based rendering algorithms that operate on hundreds of images downloaded as a result of keyword-based image search queries like “Notre Dame” or “Trevi Fountain,” and presents these algorithms and results as a first step towards 3D modeled sites, cities, and landscapes from Internet imagery.
Abstract: There are billions of photographs on the Internet, comprising the largest and most diverse photo collection ever assembled. How can computer vision researchers exploit this imagery? This paper explores this question from the standpoint of 3D scene modeling and visualization. We present structure-from-motion and image-based rendering algorithms that operate on hundreds of images downloaded as a result of keyword-based image search queries like "Notre Dame" or "Trevi Fountain." This approach, which we call Photo Tourism, has enabled reconstructions of numerous well-known world sites. This paper presents these algorithms and results as a first step towards 3D modeling of the world's well-photographed sites, cities, and landscapes from Internet imagery, and discusses key open problems and challenges for the research community.
2,207 citations
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13 Jun 2010
TL;DR: An approach for enabling existing multi-view stereo methods to operate on extremely large unstructured photo collections to decompose the collection into a set of overlapping sets of photos that can be processed in parallel, and to merge the resulting reconstructions.
Abstract: This paper introduces an approach for enabling existing multi-view stereo methods to operate on extremely large unstructured photo collections. The main idea is to decompose the collection into a set of overlapping sets of photos that can be processed in parallel, and to merge the resulting reconstructions. This overlapping clustering problem is formulated as a constrained optimization and solved iteratively. The merging algorithm, designed to be parallel and out-of-core, incorporates robust filtering steps to eliminate low-quality reconstructions and enforce global visibility constraints. The approach has been tested on several large datasets downloaded from Flickr.com, including one with over ten thousand images, yielding a 3D reconstruction with nearly thirty million points.
817 citations
"Mobile 3D mapping for surveying ear..." refers background in this paper
...[27] proposed a multi-stereoview approach for large unorganized datasets....
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TL;DR: This article surveys techniques developed in civil engineering and computer science that can be utilized to automate the process of creating as-built BIMs and outlines the main methods used by these algorithms for representing knowledge about shape, identity, and relationships.
789 citations
"Mobile 3D mapping for surveying ear..." refers result in this paper
...Several recent and promising studies, including [37–41], show that 3D point clouds acquired by laser scanners, video or photo cameras positioned on the ground can be successfully converted to object models....
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