Rapid 3D Reconstruction with Commercial Drones

The proposed project will use commercially available drones to deploy a small custom-built sensor and computing payload to perform rapid 3D reconstruction of urban environments.During flight, on-board lidar, imaging and inertial measurement sensors will be used to construct a real-time shape model of the environment. All sensor information will be recorded on-board the aircraft to allow further processing offline. The system will produce realistic 3D models with superior speed, accuracy and quality as compared to commercially available photogrammetry products.While the shape models can be created in realtime, the colorization will be conducted offline in a centralized node consistent with the C3D architecture.Near Earth will provide a software interface to the ATAC ground control station software to enable navigation and control of aircraft through a tablet computer. Waypoints will be selected interactively using this interface, and the vehicle will autonomously navigate through those waypoints using onboard sensors, without relying upon GPS.In Option I, we will integrate our existing autonomy modules to provide safe and efficient flight operations by using the real-time reconstruction data.In Option II, we will automatically analyze reconstructions to identify changes over time, presenting those through a graphical user interface.The proposed project will use commercially available drones to deploy a small custom-built sensor and computing payload to perform rapid 3D reconstruction of urban environments.During flight, on-board lidar, imaging and inertial measurement sensors will be used to construct a real-time shape model of the environment. All sensor information will be recorded on-board the aircraft to allow further processing offline. The system will produce realistic 3D models with superior speed, accuracy and quality as compared to commercially available photogrammetry products.While the shape models can be created in realtime, the colorization will be conducted offline in a centralized node consistent with the C3D architecture.Near Earth will provide a software interface to the ATAC ground control station software to enable navigation and control of aircraft through a tablet computer. Waypoints will be selected interactively using this interface, and the vehicle will autonomously navigate through those waypoints using onboard sensors, without relying upon GPS.In Option I, we will integrate our existing autonomy modules to provide safe and efficient flight operations by using the real-time reconstruction data.In Option II, we will automatically analyze reconstructions to identify changes over time, presenting those through a graphical user interface.