Remotely piloted aircraft-based automated vertical surface survey

Carlos H Grohmann; Camila D Viana; Guilherme P B Garcia; Rafael W Albuquerque

doi:10.1016/j.mex.2022.101982

Remotely piloted aircraft-based automated vertical surface survey

MethodsX. 2022 Dec 21:10:101982. doi: 10.1016/j.mex.2022.101982. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Carlos H Grohmann^{1

2}, Camila D Viana^{3

2}, Guilherme P B Garcia^{3

2}, Rafael W Albuquerque^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Energy and Environment (IEE), Universidade de São Paulo (USP), São Paulo 05508-010, Brazil.
² Spatial Analysis And Modelling Lab (SPAMLab) - https://spamlab.github.io/, Brazil.
³ Institute of Geosciences (IGc), Universidade de São Paulo (USP), São Paulo 05508-080, Brazil.

Abstract

Remotely Piloted Aircrafts (RPAs) are commonly used as a platform for collecting images which can be processed with Structure from Motion-Multi View Stereo (SfM-MVS) to generate 3D models. However, mobile applications for mapping planning are not designed for image acquisition of vertical surfaces, such as quarry walls or large cliffs, leaving the user to a manual flight operation, which does not ensure optimal overlap between images. Here we describe a workflow, based on the Litchi App, for automated RPA missions designed to acquire images of vertical surfaces or structures.•An easy-to-follow 8 steps method to survey vertical surfaces using a Remotely Piloted Aircraft.•It can be applied to outcrops, quarry walls, high cliffs and virtually any other type of vertical surface.•The workflow is flexible and can be adapted to a variety of target configurations and user-defined parameters.

Keywords: DJI Remotely Piloted Aircraft‐based automated vertical surface survey; Drone; Mining; Outcrop; Quarry; RPA; Slope stability; Structural geology; Vertical.