Budget Uav Systems for the Prospection of Small- And Medium-Scale Archaeological Sites

Abstract

Commission I, ICWG I/VbKEY WORDS: Archaeology, Photogrammetry, UAV, UAS, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, Platforms, Mission Planning, Mapping ABSTRACT:One of the popular uses of UAVs in photogrammetry is providing an archaeological documentation. A wide offer of low-cost (consumer) grade UAVs, as well as the popularity of user-friendly photogrammetric software allowing obtaining satisfying results, contribute to facilitating the process of preparing documentation for small archaeological sites. However, using solutions of this kind is much more problematic for larger areas. The limited possibilities of autonomous flight makes it significantly harder to obtain data for areas too large to be covered during a single mission. Moreover, sometimes the platforms used are not equipped with telemetry systems, which makes navigating and guaranteeing a similar quality of data during separate flights difficult. The simplest solution is using a better UAV, however the cost of devices of such type often exceeds the financial capabilities of archaeological expeditions.The aim of this article is to present methodology allowing obtaining data for medium scale areas using only a basic UAV. The proposed methodology assumes using a simple multirotor, not equipped with any flight planning system or telemetry. Navigating of the platform is based solely on live-view images sent from the camera attached to the UAV. The presented survey was carried out using a simple GoPro camera which, from the perspective of photogrammetric use, was not the optimal configuration due to the fish eye geometry of the camera. Another limitation is the actual operational range of UAVs which in the case of cheaper systems, rarely exceeds 1 kilometre and is in fact often much smaller. Therefore the surveyed area must be divided into sub-blocks which correspond to the range of the drone. It is inconvenient since the blocks must overlap, so that they will later be merged during their processing. This increases the length of required flights as well as the computing power necessary to process a greater number of images.These issues make prospection highly inconvenient, but not impossible. Our paper presents our experiences through two case studies: surveys conducted in Nepal under the aegis of UNESCO, and works carried out as a part of a Polish archaeological expedition in Cyprus, which both prove that the proposed methodology allows obtaining satisfying results. The article is an important voice in the ongoing debate between commercial and academic archaeologists who discuss the balance between the required standards of conducting archaeological works and economic capabilities of archaeological missions.

Mapping the Inhospitable Landscapes of the Orkney Islands using RPAS

“…On both sites, a DJI Phantom 3 Advance RPAS was used. This RPAS is commonly used by archaeologists as it provides a good balance between cost and quality (compare Ostrowski & Hanus, ). One of the most important features of this RPAS is the onboard global positioning system (GPS) that provides georeferences for all the images taken during the flight.…”

The Design and Experimental Development of Air Scanning Using a Sniffer Quadcopter

“…Due to short flight duration (<40 min), several settings must be initialized to permit the quadcopter to perform optimally, such as the target point, in the form of GPS coordinate, and quadcopter flight behavior, in the form of altitude, speed, and measurement pattern. The settings can also be made on the ground station system through the designed mission planner system which can communicate with the sniffer quadcopter using 433 MHz telemetry [27,28]. The architecture of the aerial platform system is presented in Figure 1.…”

THE INFLUENCE OF FLIGHT PLANNING AND CAMERA ORIENTATION IN UAVs PHOTOGRAMMETRY. A TEST IN THE AREA OF ROCCA SAN SILVESTRO (LI), TUSCANY

“…The next phase of the work was the processing of the on site acquired data; the images of the different flights were processed in several blocks with the software Pix4D Mapper (Gini et al, 2013;Ostrowski & Hanus 2016;Rodrigues et al, 2016). As previously reported, we decided to use a specific product for our evaluations about the main topic of this article, then the processes of all the seven projects were stopped at the phase of point cloud generation (no other products such as meshes or ortophotos were created in this phase).…”