Drones for research - Observing the

world in 3D from a LiDAR-UAV

Program lunch seminar:

Lammert Kooistra: The Unmanned Aerial Remote Sensing Facility

goes 3D: Unmanned Aerial Laser Scanning

Sander Mücher: From point clouds to 3D products: opportunities for

high-resolution LiDAR

Harm Bartholomeus: 3D analysis and visualization for forest research

Questions and discussion

The Unmanned Aerial Remote Sensing

Facility goes 3D:

Unmanned Aerial Laser Scanning

Lammert Kooistra1, Harm Bartholomeus1, Sander Mucher2,

Henk Kramer2, Jappe Franke2 and Benjamin Brede1

1: Laboratory of Geo-Information Science and Remote Sensing,

2: Wageningen Environmental Research

Drones in the news

Why UAVs in science?

Satellites

Airplanes

UAVs

In-situ

‘’Bridging

the gap’’

UAVs as flexible platforms

Your own flexible platform

• Autonomy

• Timing: fill data gaps ~ flying below the clouds

• Sensors: application specific + increasing nr. camera’s

• Coverage: increased spatial detail

Example Science fields:

• Plant phenotyping: high-throughput

• Precision agriculture: field -> zone -> plant

• Ecology/forestry: scaling from plot to landscape level

• Water: detailed spatial coverage + accessibility

RC Copters→UAVs→Drones

Radio controlled helicopters have been around for decades

● Hard to fly & prone to crash

Around 2005 the technology for full-electric drones starter to become available

● LiPo batteries, IMU, autopilot, GPS

Around 2007/2008 the technology was mature enough for dedicated remote sensing research

Around 2016 kids are capable and can afford to fly these (and shoot amazing photos & videos)

25k€ @ 2008

1000€ @ 2016

Professional UAVs today

Range:

Small consumer systems (~1000€, just photos)

Medium UAVs (5-15k€, a few kg of space for payload)

Professional ready-to-use mapping systems (25-350k€, ready sensors and processing chains)

Large scale system (”real airplanes”, €€€)

Beginning of Unmanned Aerial Remote

Sensing Facility (UARSF) of WUR

Our UAV activities started in 2012 with Interreg project ”Smart Inspectors”

GRS & Alterra acquired an Aerialtronics Altura AT8 octocopter

● ”Okkie”

● Own camera systems developed

Soil Physics and Land Management @ WUR acquired a Mavinci fixed wing

● RGB camera

www.wur.eu/uarsf

Objectives Research Facility:

● Platform for dedicated and high-quality experiments

● Calibration facilities and disseminating processing procedures to the UAV user community

● Test use in range of applications like habitat monitoring, precision agriculture and land degradation assessment

UARSF now

Our pilots

Our platforms

+ Operation Manual and Safety Management System

= Company exemption from the Dutch Aviation Authorities

Current operations NL

Applications:

Coastal monitoring

Habitat mapping

Musselbank mapping

Forest biomass and

phenology

Hail damage assessment

Precision agriculture

Agro experimental plots

Nr of flights:

2015: 250

2016: 290

Photogrammetric

processing

Structure from Motion

Requires just a normal camera

Software detects features from overlapping photos

The 3D positions of the features are triangulated producing 3D model of the target

The photos are projected on the model producing orthophoto/orthomosaic

Simple: Phantom 3 Professional

~120 photos above 4ha forest plot in Ghana

Photogrammetric processing allows production of orthophoto and top-of-canopy 3D model

RGB orthophoto Digital Surface Model Red-Green vegetation index

Photogrammetric 3D point cloud

Laser Scanning principle

WUR terrestrial Laser Scanning Research: www.lidar.wur.nl

Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS)

Point cloud: x, y, z coordinate very high frequent laser transmitter/ receiver

Airborne Laser Scanning (ALS)

Comparison UAV-SfM and TLS

UAV-SfM:

Approximation

Surface smoothed

Relative height

TLS:

Complete point cloud

Digital Terrain Model

Absolute height

vs.

source: MSc thesis Sabina Rosca:2015 Guyana study

Unmanned Aerial Laser Scanning

Advantages

● Complete 3D structure (incl. terrain model)

● Absolute height and other parameters

Disadvantages

● TLS: intensive fieldwork: large nr of scan positions

● ALS: relative expensive and inflexible

Solution: combine UAV and Laser Scanning technology

● Business proposal written for Shared Facilities WUR November 2015

● Focus applications: phenotyping, habitat structure mapping, forest monitoring

● Approved January 2016

ULS: Riegl RiCopter

Full system: UAV + Laser Scanning + software

High quality and accuracy: within 1 cm x, y, z

Long flying time: 30 minutes

RiCopter team and operations

Ricopter team

Pilots: Jappe Franke, Henk Kramer and Harm Bartholomeus

Operators: Sander Mücher, Benjamin Brede, Lammert Kooistra

Operations

Shared facility: outside and inside WUR users (incl. companies)

Projects research focus: feasibility, method development, validation

Intake, feasibility and planning: contact Lammert or Sander

Start operations: from January 2017

Operating area: focus Netherlands, opportunities Germany

Ricopter costs

Based on intake: decision Go-No Go

Legal limitations operating area

Research component

Costs (part of intake)

RiCopter system: tariffs for half day or whole day

Personal (hourly rate):

● flight operation: minimal pilot and operator

● flight-preparation

● post-processing: product level

Contact: Lammert Kooistra or Sander Mücher

RiCopter demonstration

Start demonstration

Drones for research - Observing the

world in 3D from a LiDAR-UAV

Program lunch seminar:

Lammert Kooistra: The Unmanned Aerial Remote Sensing Facility

goes 3D: Unmanned Aerial Laser Scanning

Sander Mücher: From point clouds to 3D products: opportunities for

high-resolution LiDAR

Harm Bartholomeus: 3D analysis and visualization for forest research

Questions and discussion