Use of unmanned aerial vehicles on example of Phantom 4 (standard) for creating digital terrain models

Nowadays, more and more unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are used to solve various problems. The use of specialized unmanned aerial vehicles causes some difficulties. The UAVs are quite expensive, and you need to have the necessary qualifications in order to effectively operate them. At the same time, there are a lot of non-specialized UAV models, which are much cheaper and easier to use. But the question remains about their capabilities. For example, how to generate a digital terrain model (DТM) of the required quality in order to use it in land use planning? The report is tasked with the scientific (theoretical) substantiation of the need for preliminary calculation of the parameters of aerial survey from the UAV to ensure a required accuracy of the DTM. The calculation involves taking into account the pixel size of the sensor, overlap, image base and the required RMSE of the heights. The report presents a comparison of two methods for DTM generation. Namely, the DTM generation as a result of photogrammetric processing of images obtained during aerial surveying with UAVs and a more traditional method of ground surveying using a modern total station. Obviously, the main criterion for the quality of the generated DTM is the accuracy of the spatial coordinates of its points. This paper presents the qualitative comparison of DТM that were generated using different engineering equipment and using various processing methods. The analysis of the results is based on the least squares method. The study concluded that the use of the photos from the UAVs is effective for the DТM generation. © 2019 Latvia University of Agriculture. All rights reserved.