USE AND EVALUATION OF A SHORT RANGE SMALL QUADCOPTER AND A PORTABLE IMAGING LASER FOR BUILT HERITAGE 3D DOCUMENTATION

Abstract. The market of imaging and non-imaging sensors offers nowadays a wide range of products, which are constantly improving and growing. Given the recent advances in the miniaturization of devices for metric survey, and the relatively cheap COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) solutions widely available, it is therefore crucial to optimally exploit, calibrate and evaluate the performance for 3D data acquisition of the new available devices. These issues are part of the latest research addresses of different Geomatics groups, with the aim to analyze and evaluate these new sensors, in order to discover their real potentialities which are not only connected to their interesting design, low price and small dimensions.

According to the final objective of the research, which is the realization of 3D metric survey of a Cultural Heritage site using different techniques and methods, one small UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) and a portable TLS (Terrestrial Laser Scanner) have been employed. The acquisition strategies and the processing methods are discussed, and the quality of the achievable results is analysed, together with an evaluation of the sensors and the outline of the best practices and use cases scenarios.