Hi there,
I'm new to this site, and am looking to get into using a small UAV to capture images that can be orthorectified into high quality mosaics. My potential clients will be small farms, wineries, and environmental groups that would like up to date, high resolution maps for analysis and strategy planning.
My plan is to first use a home made UAV, most likely a bixler plane and the ardupilot, or investing in a swinglet cam.
My questions right now are:
1.) The swinglet cam takes photos and creates a log file of the gps coordinates and camera position which is later merged after the flight to help in post flight processing. Is it possible, with the ardupilot, to fire a camera at a given interval and have the GPS location and plane parameters recorded as well?
2.) I have researched several post processing services, including pix4d, photoscan pro, inpho orthomaster, etc... and I'd like to get some opinions on what is the best piece of software for orthorectification and mosaicking that requires the least amount of intervention and can still work well without a DEM?
Thanks!
B
Replies
I have looked at many sites my self but because Ill be shooting in the remote locations and internet service will be un available Im now looking in to software based unit. I have build a mini GPU server but need the software to test if and configure it :(
I'm using a standard Skywalker with a Lumix 12Mp camera. After testing lots of other softwares
I have the trial version of Autopano and am impressed with the results after putting about 6000 pics through it. I finally worked out that better results are achieved with fewer pics (<20) rather than more(120). let me know if you want some samples or more info.
Jerry
I looked into this a while back as well. It looked like http://www.2d3.com/ (~$10K!) had the best software if you want plug and play google earth type layers and orthomosaics straight from you photos with out much effort, but I haven't used it. I'd also love to hear back from anyone actually using software to do this type of stuff.