Development of a software to optimize and plan the acquisitions from UAV and a first application in a post-seismic environment

Abstract

An Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) is an aircraft without a human pilot on board. UAVs allow close-range photogrammetric acquisitions potentially useful for building large-scale cartography and acquisitions of building geometry. This is particularly useful in emergency situations where major accessibility problems limit the possibility of using conventional surveys. Presently, however, flights of this class of UAV are planned based only on the pilot's experience and they often acquire three or more times the number of images needed. This is clearly a time-consuming and autonomy-reducing procedure, which is certainly detrimental when extensive surveys are needed. For this reason new software, to plan the UAV's survey will be illustrated.

Keywords:

• Earthquake
• emergency mapping
• flight planning
• photogrammetry
• UAV