Evaluation of the Quality of Action Cameras With Wide-Angle Lenses in Uav Photogrammetry

Abstract

The application of light-weight cameras in UAV photogrammetry is required due to restrictions in payload. In general, consumer cameras with normal lens type are applied to a UAV system. The availability of action cameras, like the GoPro Hero4 Black, including a wide-angle lens (fish-eye lens) offers new perspectives in UAV projects. With these investigations, different calibration procedures for fish-eye lenses are evaluated in order to quantify their accuracy potential in UAV photogrammetry. Herewith the GoPro Hero4 is evaluated using different acquisition modes. It is investigated to which extent the standard calibration approaches in OpenCV or Agisoft PhotoScan/Lens can be applied to the evaluation processes in UAV photogrammetry. Therefore different calibration setups and processing procedures are assessed and discussed. Additionally a pre-correction of the initial distortion by GoPro Studio and its application to the photogrammetric purposes will be evaluated. An experimental setup with a set of control points and a prospective flight scenario is chosen to evaluate the processing results using Agisoft PhotoScan. Herewith it is analysed to which extent a pre-calibration and pre-correction of a GoPro Hero4 will reinforce the reliability and accuracy of a flight scenario.

Indoor Photogrammetry Using Uavs With Protective Structures: Issues and Precision Tests

“…This is also quite obvious from the check of the standard deviation on the coordinates, ranging around 60cm. Taking into account the relevant radial distortion inherent to ultra-wide angle lenses, a further methodology test provided image pre-processing in order to minimize distortion, based on a pre-calibration of internal orientation parameters, and use of these "undistort" images as input of the alignment procedure (Teo, 2015, Balletti, et al, 2014, Hastedt, et al, 2016.…”

Monitoring coastal morphology: the potential of low‐cost fixed array action cameras for 3D reconstruction

“…However, the advancement in commercial photogrammetric software has meant fisheye remapping functions are available to correct some of these previously unsuitable radial distortions. Research outside geomorphology has successfully used fisheye lenses with SfM-MVS (Ballarin et al, 2015;Hastedt et al, 2016). Increasing use of action cameras with SfM-MVS means that understanding potential 3D reconstruction quality is now essential.…”

Design and Implementation of a Novel Portable 360° Stereo Camera System With Low-Cost Action Cameras

“…Furthermore, the size and number of outliers increase with the radial distance in the image plane where the fisheye distortions grow larger and do no longer match the mathematical model in case of these low-cost cameras. A comparison with previous calibrations with the action camera GoPro from Hastedt et al (2016) with a reprojection error of 1.2 pixels or Balletti et al (2014) with 3.9 pixels is not possible since they both calibrated only single cameras and not a stereo system. They both report problems in regions with large radial distance and question the stability of the action camera's IOPs.…”