3D mobile mapping with a low cost UAV system

Abstract

In order to accomplish the automatic mobile mapping task in a small area of interest, a low cost UAV system is proposed in this paper. Multiple sensors including a global shutter camera and an inertial measurement unit are calibrated and synchronized to collect data from the area of interest. First the images are matched by the chronological order and the SfM is utilized. Then the origin SfM result is integrated with the IMU data by adding the IMU constraints into the bundle adjustment. At last the photogrammetry point clouds are generated using PMVS according to the extrinsic parameters. Experiments are undertaken in a typical scene with photogrammetry point clouds generated. The trajectory estimated by the proposed integration method are compared with the method that relies on image only, showing that the proposed method has better performance.