ABSTRACT:Soil erosion is a major issue concerning crop land degradation. Understanding these complex erosion processes is necessary for effective soil conservation. Herein, high resolution modelling of relief changes caused by run-off from precipitation events is an essential research matter. For non-invasive field measurements the combination of unmanned airborne vehicle (UAV) image data and terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) may be especially suitable. The study's objective is to measure high precision digital terrain models (DTM) of the soil surface at two selected research areas with the extent of at least 500 square meters. The used UAV is integrated with GPS and inertial measurement unit (IMU). Furthermore, an active stabilizing camera mount equipped with a customary compact camera is implemented. For multi-temporal comparison of measured soil surfaces and for aligning UAV and TLS data a stable local reference system consisting of signalized points is defined by total station measurements. Two different software packages are applied for DTM generation from UAV images and compared to the corresponding DTM captured by TLS. Differences between the point clouds are minimal six millimeters and generally within TLS accuracy range. First multi-temporal comparisons are made and illustrate interesting surface changes.

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The paper presents an approach for the generation of digital elevation models (DEMs) of underwater areas from aerial images. Standard software-products do not provide the possibility to measure correctly through refractive interfaces, such as water. Existing solutions for that problem are based on oriented images and known water levels with the DEM points determined by forward intersection based on reconstructed image ray paths (ray tracing). In this article we present an integrated procedure for image orientation as well as DEM mass point determination from aerial imagery containing both land and underwater areas. The proof of concept was done by capturing UAV imagery of shallow water areas of a high-alpine lake in the Swiss alps. In the paper the processed dataset will be presented. Furthermore, the extraction and matching of image-points observed through water are discussed. The accuracy potential as well as practical limitations of processing multimedia-data are analysed.

ABSTRACT:The paper describes the determination of the percentage area of bitumen on partly covered aggregate. This task is a typical issue in material testing in road construction. The asphalt components bitumen and aggregate are subjected to defined mechanical stress in the presence of water in order to test the affine properties of the components. The degree to which the bitumen separates from the aggregate surface serves as an indicator for the quality of the affinity. Until now, examiners have been judging the coverage degree of samples by visual rating. Several research projects attempted to replace the error-prone subjective assessment by automatic procedures. These procedures analyse the different chromaticities of aggregate and bitumen in RGB images. However, these approaches as a whole are not reliable enough because of the rather specific requirements that are made on the environmental conditions when the picture is taken (illumination, exclusion of extraneous light) and also on the lab assistant (manual definition of training areas, management of camera and illumination parameters). Moreover, the analysis is not suitable for all types of rock because of the necessary difference in colour between bitumen and aggregate (e.g. dark rock samples). Contrary to previous approaches, the new multi-directional reflectance measurements use the different surface characteristics of bitumen and aggregate instead of the chromaticities as separation criteria. These differences are made visible by directional lighting with a laser. The diffuse reflection from the aggregate surface and the directional reflection from the optically smoother bitumen produce definitely distinguishable brightnesses in the image. Thus the colour of the material is of no significance. The approach was used in a procedure and assessed. The paper presents the method itself, approaches for the elimination of reflections and first results. Moreover, the measuring principle is compared with existing procedures and benefits and drawbacks are outlined.