Accuracy of Drone Based Surveys to Measure Stockpile Volume

This paper outlines a two phase experiment evaluating the accuracy of volumetric calculations using a commercially available drone and structure-from-motion (SfM) software. In the first phase, a large cardboard pyramid with a known volume was used to simulate a stockpile. Using georeferenced images...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inThe American professional constructor pp. 6 - 14
Main Authors Burgett, Joseph M, Shaffer, Scott, Stuckey, Eric
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Mt. Royal American Institute of Constructors 01.10.2019
Subjects
Accuracy
Aircraft
Cameras
Cardboard
Computation
Data points
Drones
Engineering
Experiments
Information technology
Restrictions
Software
Stockpiling
United States > US
South Carolina
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Summary:This paper outlines a two phase experiment evaluating the accuracy of volumetric calculations using a commercially available drone and structure-from-motion (SfM) software. In the first phase, a large cardboard pyramid with a known volume was used to simulate a stockpile. Using georeferenced images collected by a Phantom 4 Pro drone and the SfM software ContextCapture, the computed volumes ranged between 1.5% and 3.3% of the actual volume. In the second phase of the experiment, a photometric survey was created of a large SCDOT borrow pit. The volumetric calculations were computed using conventional survey practices and with drone collected images. There was a 9.8% difference between the two methods with the drone base model providing significantly higher model resolution and number of data points.
ISSN:0146-7557