Improved Method for Airborne Photogrammetry Using Small Uninhabited Aerial Vehicles in Recording Existing and Historic Structures

This research's objective was to investigate an alternative cost effective means of direct georeferencing for airborne photogrammetry using small UAVs. Through added computational functionality, a custom data acquisition script was developed to directly associate the aircraft's position and orientation to an image being captured in real time. The implemented system was tested by conducting an aerial survey on River Field, located on the campus of Carleton University. A comparison between the data recorded from the aircraft's telemetry log with the results obtained from the custom data acquisition script was conducted to verify its efficacy. The calculated parameters of exterior orientation for the direct and assisted methods were then compared to the reference values determined through indirect georeferencing. Additionally, a comparison of the generated 3D point clouds was undertaken. The results showed good agreement between the point clouds generated through direct and assisted georeferencing with the reference point cloud.