Topographic Surveying using Low-Cost Amateur Drones & 4K Ultra-High-Definition Videos
Authors: Mustafa M Amami  , Ali M El-Turki  , Asim I Rustum  , Ibrahim M El-Amaari  , Tariq A Jabir  
Published: May 2022

These days, the science of photogrammetry is frequently used in a wide range of applications, including engineering geology, medication, security, navigation, and topographic surveying works. Drones have gradually become an effectual and frequent technique for obtaining a number of photogrammetric products, such as ortho-mosaics, Digital Elevation Model (DEM), and land detailed topographic maps. This paper investigates the possibility of employing low-cost amateur drones with 4K Ultra-High-Definition (UHD) video for topographic surveying works and creating DEM's. DJI Mavic 2 PRO drone with Hasselblad L1D-20C 20 MP camera has been used for covering an expected gas & oil pipeline route in the South of Libya with length of nearly 15 km and width of 200 m. 60 well-distributed high-quality 3D ground points, divided as 30 Ground Control Points (GCP's) and 30 check points, have been used for more stable and robust photogrammetric processing and for reliable evaluation, respectively. The camera has been calibrated twice, before and after executing the flight mission for trustworthy Interior Orientation Elements (IOE's). The recorded video has been split into smaller videos based on the capturing time of the required frames, and the small videos have been extracted to individual UHD photos using Matlab image tools. Leica Photogrammetric Suite (LPS) software has been used for all processing steps, except the automatic filtration of the generated tie points, which has been carried out using self-developed Matlab algorithm for epipolar geometry and 2D transformation based filters. Results show that DEM's with quality of nearly 1.2 to 2 decimeter in plane and elevation, respectively can be obtained using DJI Mavic 2 PRO drone, 4K UHD video taken by Hasselblad L1D-20C 20 MP camera, pixel ground footprint of 8 cm, and flight height of 350 m. This level of accuracy is appropriate for many engineering applications, such as initial-planning projects stretched on huge areas, urban development plans, GIS data collection, inventory of earth works materials, and 3D modeling. The obtained quality of the generated DEM depends on the flight height and the camera quality, IOE's, and resolution. Tests show that using 4K UHD video for photogrammetric applications can provide UHD extracted frames, similar to that captured singly, especially with fit flight speed and camera settings, namely: ISO sensitivity, shatter speed, and aperture size. Also, using video facilitates the aerial photography process, overcoming the difficulties of determining the suitable capturing time and location of individual photos in site. The other advantage is the ability of taking alternative frames if the selected images are not suitable for photogrammetric works in terms of tilting and blurring. The opportunity of changing the overlapping rates across the route is another important advantage of using video, especially for curvy routes. Moreover, using different groups of overlapped images for the same route helps for creating different DEM's for the same area, resulting more precise and dense topographic surveying works.