A Concept for High Precision Digital Terrain 3D Mapping using UAVs and Multiple Solid State LiDARs

Abstract

In recent years, the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been widely used for environment reconstruction. From the commercial point of view, photography mapping with drones has been taken as a cost-efficient solution. In general, the associated system components consist of a multi-rotor drone, an inertial measurement unit (IMU), a flight control unit, an RGB camera and a global positioning system (GPS). In this system, IMU and GPS play important roles for UAV pose estimation while the RGB camera plays a role for further image processes such as feature extraction, matching, stitching and projection. Although this solution has been widely used for large scale map exploration, the mapping precision enhancement remains an important topic, which affects the application feasibility especially for land-use planning and infrastructure building evaluation. Therefore, in this note, an alternative mapping configuration, which considers multiple non-rotary solid state LiDARs (SSLs), is presented. Owing to the long measurement range and accuracy point cloud acquisition, precise 3D digital terrain can be expected.