UAV-based platforms to obtain a cloud point of a highway and its roadisdes, covered by trees

What is it about?

Small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can be utilized acquire data of highway sections with potential safety risks. A double grid flight is proposed to obtain an adequate three-dimensional recreation of the road environment, ensuring an unbiased sight distance output. Then, a dense cloud point is derived through a Structure from Motion Multi-View Stereo process. The point cloud is classified to produce both a terrain model, characterized by its resolution, and a 3D-object model, characterized by the maximum edge length of the entities. The resulting road environment model is utilized to calculate sight distance in a geographic information system. The results enabled the detection of accident-prone locations caused by sight distance limitations. Moreover, the impact of the 3D modeling parameters on the results was assessed.

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Why is it important?

UAVs facilitate data acquisition very soon after identifying an issue, enabling rapid decision making.

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