Photogrammetry With Drones: In Mapping Technology

Identify the instruments and requirements for drone photogrammetry, including flight planning and image acquisition, plus analog and digital plotters used to transform aerial imagery into maps.

Explore camera kinds used in photogrammetry for mapping with drones, including film and digital cameras, CCD sensors, and calibration needs for accurate aerial imagery and vegetation analysis.

Plan flight lines and fly at altitudes around 8000 to 10000 meters at 200 to 350 km/h to capture scalable, detailed photographs from multiple images for precise photogrammetry.

Learn drone photogrammetry basics, including 60% forward overlap and 20–30% side overlap, forming flight-line strips and blocks for triangulation and locating photos on an airport index map.

Explore the legacy types of aerial photographs used in photogrammetry, including satellite imagery, aircraft-captured images, and ground or close-range still photography.

Explore vertical and oblique aerial photographs, including low angle (about 30 degrees) and high angle (about 60 degrees), and learn how multi-lens systems capture overlapping images to create 3D views.

Explore how photo center, perspective geometry, and relief displacement shape aerial imagery in drone photogrammetry, showing how objects of different elevations appear displaced relative to their bases.

Identify fiducial marks that determine the principal point, note how focal length affects distortion, explain object space versus image space, and classify scale into large, medium, and small scales.

Explore stereoscopic coverage in photogrammetry using stereo pairs to create a 3D view. The brain combines these overlapping photos to interpret a realistic scene.

Explore how pixel, image, image space, and ground coordinate systems define the relationship between the capture sensor, imagery, and the ground for drone photogrammetry.

Explore how interior and exterior orientation link camera geometry to real-world coordinates, using image and ground coordinate systems, GCPs, aerial triangulation, and bundle adjustment.

Learn to interpret aerial photos through object recognition and visual cues—color, brightness, contrast, texture, shapes, shadows, and associations—applied to geology, land use, and city and highway planning.

Discover how DSM captures features for 3-D modeling in telecommunications and aviation, while DEM and DTM supply elevation data for hydrology and soils with mass points and break lines.

Learn how contour lines represent elevation and slope on drone-based photogrammetry maps, including index and intermediate contours, ridges, valleys, saddles, and earthwork optimization for site selection.

Explore drawing as a visual communication tool in engineering and mapping contexts, focusing on isometric projection to represent three-dimensional objects in two dimensions.

Master orthographic projection to represent 3D objects with orthogonal projection lines on projection planes, yielding top, front, and right views, using horizontal, vertical, profile planes, and first and third-angle projections.

Learn first angle projection by placing the object in the first quadrant with a nontransparent projection plane between observer and object; compare to third angle projection used in USA.

Explore the MicroStation interface and its tool boxes, mastering file management tasks—creating, opening, renaming, copying, deleting, merging, compressing, upgrading to read, and directory operations.

Explore the micro station interface and toolbox system, including the primary and standard toolboxes, docking, and commands for drawing, editing, and managing files with snap, MDL, and element attributes.

Master mouse button settings and selection tools to efficiently pick elements, create fences, and copy or delete selections using criteria, shapes, and attributes in the micro station workflow.

Explore placement tool boxes for points, lines, and polygons, including placing points at distances, creating lines with various styles, and forming complex polygon shapes with fill, holes, and patterns.

Learn to place circles, ellipses, and arcs with the placement tool boxes, adjusting center, diameter, radius, rotation, and sweep angles for accurate mapping.

Learn how to configure daq settings, assign and edit tags, manage tag dialogs, dimension elements, place and style text, and organize cells and libraries for drone-based photogrammetry workflows.

Master the hatch pattern toolbox, including crosshatch and linear hatch options, and apply union, intersection, and difference to polygons while using distance and angle measurements.

Master micro station manipulation tools to copy, move, scale, rotate, and mirror elements; align to polygons; trim and extend; group, unlock, and apply smart match and find-and-replace for attributes.

Explore the Leica photogrammetry Pro600 workflow with the LP's project manager, performing automatic triangulation and rectification of imagery from diverse cameras and sensors.

Learn to set up a photogrammetry project for drone-based mapping by creating or opening a project, configuring mapping scale and units, and managing the library.

Learn to draw and edit lines and polygons for roads, buildings, and other features using collect line, close polygon, uphill and downhill detection, and XY edits.

Learn to draw and edit lines in photogrammetry with snaps, intersections, and vertex tools; adjust heights, slopes, and building outlines for accurate mapping.

Master drawing and editing lines in photogrammetry by adjusting tolerance and cleaning tools, changing line symbology and construction class, and managing data collection across multiple modes.

Draw offset lines dynamically and edit offset elements for multilane features, and configure display, symbology, and feature code settings to support accurate data collection.

Learn to create DTM and contours from drone photogrammetry by placing mass points and break lines, building surfaces, and refining elevations with major and minor contours and automated labeling.

Execute the photogrammetry data capture workflow from acquiring aerial photographs to aerial triangulation and feature collection for accurate DTM generation.

Apply general compilation rules for digitizing polygons and linear features in photogrammetry with drones, using the right-hand rule, ensuring connectivity, and enforcing QC to ensure data quality.