Investigating the New Ultracam Dragon Hybrid Aerial Mapping System

Hybrid airborne systems, integrating imaging and ranging sensors within the same platform, were introduced almost ten years on the market as the new frontier of aerial mapping. Recently Vexcel Imaging developed the ULTRACAM DRAGON 4.1 hybrid airborne system which integrates a Riegl LiDAR scanner, a multi-camera imaging system and a GNSS/IMU unit. This paper investigates the characteristics and quality of derivable geospatial products, (i) examining different aerial triangulation (AT) strategies for imagery data (leveraging hand-crafted and learning-based image matching approaches for tie point extraction and (ii) evaluating the benefits of the integration of LiDAR and imaging as complementary data in supporting the 3D reconstruction of different urban environments. Moreover, the work introduces a powerful measuring tool (MEASUREE) developed by AVT-Airborne System, designed for photogrammetric analyses of large aerial blocks composed of oblique imagery.