Simulating a Hybrid Acquisition System for UAV Platforms

Currently, there is a rapid trend in the production of airborne sensors consisting of multi-view cameras or hybrid sensors, i.e., a LiDAR scanner coupled with one or multiple cameras to enrich the data acquisition in terms of colors, texture, completeness of coverage, accuracy, etc. However, the current UAV hybrid systems are mainly equipped with a single camera that will not be sufficient to view the facades of buildings or other complex objects without having double flight paths with a defined oblique angle. This entails extensive flight planning, acquisition duration, extra costs, and data handling. In this paper, a multi-view camera system which is similar to the conventional Maltese cross configurations used in the standard aerial oblique camera systems is simulated. This proposed camera system is integrated with a multi-beam LiDAR to build an efficient UAV hybrid system. To design the low-cost UAV hybrid system, two types of cameras are investigated and proposed, namely the MAPIR Survey and the SenseFly SODA, integrated with a multi-beam digital Ouster OS1-32 LiDAR sensor. Two simulated UAV flight experiments are created with a dedicated methodology and processed with photogrammetric methods. The results show that with a flight speed of 5 m/s and an image overlap of 80/80, an average density of up to 1500 pts/m2 can be achieved with adequate facade coverage in one-pass flight strips.