UAV – An Eye in the Sky

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Jesper Falk, COWI A/S

Market Director and Head of Section, Mapping & Surveying Denmark

Agenda

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› Equipment and Organisation

› Basic output

› Challenges

› Examples of use of UAV data

COWI Group

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› Danish Engineering and Consulting Company

› 6.200 employees operating worldwide

› Leading Northern European Mapping Division (second largest in Europe)

› Traditional mapping / lidar with aircrafts

› Surveying section

› Traditional equipment: totalstation, GPS, levelling and bathymetric

› New technology: mobile mapping, terrestrial laserscaning and UAV

UAV and COWI

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› Why UAV and COWI?

› More than 45 years of experience with traditional mapping

› More than 30 years of experience with surveying

› UAV operations started January 2012 in Denmark and September 2014 in Norway.

› Flight permission in Denmark, Norway and Sweden (very soon)

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Equipment and organisation

• 4 no. fixed wing UAV (up to 2.2 kg)

• 2 no. rotorcopter UAV (up to 3.5 kg)

• 11 no. operators and 4 no. processing experts in

Norway and Denmark

When is UAV an advantage for surveying / mapping?

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› At small and middle-sized mapping projects

› When high level of details is required (2 cm pixel resolution)

› Areas in change (construction, nature or environmental sites)

› Inspection

› Thermal mapping

› 3D modelling

› Other sensors: Lidar, light, sound..

Orthophotos

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› Examples from previous projects (orthophotos – 3 cm pixel)

Orthophoto and DTM

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› Grønmo Golf course

Surfacemodel

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› Planning

› Visualisation

› Building measurements

…..

Current Challenges 1/2

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› UAV regulations incl. VLOS req.

› Weather conditions – daily planning.

› Standby period – winter, windy, raining etc.

› Quality of sensors (mainly winter period)

› Poor quality= poor accuracy!!

› Poor correlation in forest, water and large farming areas

› Number of GCPs vs. accuracy requirement

› New sensors are introduced all the time

Current Challenges 2/2

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› A "proper" DTM (process from DSM to DTM)

› Still a time consuming proces but software is "improving".

› Blured building edges

› but software is "improving"

Selected UAV projects

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› Monitoring of Infrastructure projects

› Automatic classification of vegetation

› Mapping after Natural Disaster

› Mapping of Glacier in the Artic

› 3D model of buildings

› Traffic counting

› Visualisation

Monitoring of construction site (railway)

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› Ortophoto

Monitoring of construction site (railway)

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› Terrainmodel with contour lines

UAV projects for Road Authorities

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› Monitoring of progress

› Check of road markings

› Noise calculation

› Volume calculation

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Classification of Japanese Rose

Mapping / automatic detection of hogweed

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Mapping after natural disasters

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› Mapping of forest areas

› Orthophoto (detection of trees etc)

› Surface model (height of trees, volume etc.)

› Flooding

Mapping of Glacier

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3D Mapping of buildings

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› Christian IV Brewery in Copenhagen

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Totalstation = 1.36 m Pointcloud = 1.35 m

Totalstation = 14.16 m Pointcloud = 14.14 m

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Totalstation = 26.43 m Point cloud = 26.45 m

Minecraft model

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› Minecraft model of Chr. IV Brewery

› Improved Minecraft model (indoor and outdoor) will be ready shortly.

Traffic Monitoring

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Visualisation

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› Three examples

› Visualisation – Glacier edge in Greenland

› Visualisation – Gravel Pit in Denmark

› Visualisation – extension of a power plant in Copenhagen

Visualisation

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Visualisation

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Our Future….

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› Thermal mapping

› Test is ongoing

› Lidar

› Evaluating test data

› 3D modelling using video

› Test is ongoing

› Multispektral sensors

Questions

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Jesper Falk Market Director and Head of Section

Mapping and Surveying Denmark Mobile +45 24806706

E-mail jxf@cowi.dk