Towards online UAS-based photogrammetric measurements for 3D metrology inspection

This paper presents the development of a vision metrology system for high-accuracy three-dimensional measurements of large structures requiring dimensional tolerancing. The proposed system integrates a V-STARS N platinum photogrammetric system from Geodetic Systems, a DJI M600 Pro UAS with Ronin-MX gimbal and a dual antenna for real-time kinematic positioning. The paper presents the system architecture and the developed software for camera network simulation and image acquisition. As an acquisition scenario, a large dish parabolic antenna is simulated. The benefits of the developed procedure include the ability to handle obstacle avoidance and self-occlusions and, employing a rigorous camera network simulation approach, to overcome the limitations of currently available flight planning commercial tools that are mainly conceived for mapping applications. Future work will consider extensive testing of the platform in real-case scenarios.