ISPRS-Archives The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences ISPRS-Archives Int. Arch. Photogramm. Remote Sens. Spatial Inf. Sci. 2194-9034 Copernicus Publications Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/isprsarchives-XL-1-W4-313-2015 UAV-BASED POINT CLOUD GENERATION FOR OPEN-PIT MINE MODELLING Shahbazi M. 1 Sohn G. 2 Théau J. 1 Ménard P. 3 Dept. of Applied Geomatics, Université de Sherbrooke, Boul. de l'Université, Sherbrooke, Québec, Canada Dept. of Geomatics Engineering, York University, Keele Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada Centre de géomatique du Québec, Saguenay, Québec, Canada 26 08 2015 XL-1/W4 313 320 Copyright: © 2015 M. Shahbazi et al. 2015 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This article is available from https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/XL-1-W4/313/2015/isprs-archives-XL-1-W4-313-2015.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/XL-1-W4/313/2015/isprs-archives-XL-1-W4-313-2015.pdf

Along with the advancement of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), improvement of high-resolution cameras and development of vision-based mapping techniques, unmanned aerial imagery has become a matter of remarkable interest among researchers and industries. These images have the potential to provide data with unprecedented spatial and temporal resolution for three-dimensional (3D) modelling. In this paper, we present our theoretical and technical experiments regarding the development, implementation and evaluation of a UAV-based photogrammetric system for precise 3D modelling. This system was preliminarily evaluated for the application of gravel-pit surveying. The hardware of the system includes an electric powered helicopter, a 16-megapixels visible camera and inertial navigation system. The software of the system consists of the in-house programs built for sensor calibration, platform calibration, system integration and flight planning. It also includes the algorithms developed for structure from motion (SfM) computation including sparse matching, motion estimation, bundle adjustment and dense matching.