How To Map Large Projects Using Drone

Capturing large area is a big challenge by using drones, lets know the complication on it and how to
handle that kind of projects. One of my clients came for capture a 700sq.km data using a drone in a
short period of time. If you are a drone operator you might know the number is a giant. I will mention
here the factors that will make survey faster and collect the data. Let’s see how it may be done by
available resources.

Normally while we survey using a drone, we need to know the following considerations,

 It’s a multirotor, fixed wing or VTOL.

 The camera used.
 Lens/ focal length of the camera.
 Field of View of a camera.
 Sensor Size of the camera.
 Drone cruise speed and endurance.

Choosing the Drone

The primary factor is to know about the drone type if it’s a multirotor the max endurance of DJI
product is 20 to 30 min depending on the wind conditions, in case of fixed wing it depends on payload
from 40 to 50 min and in case of VTOL from 90 min to 120 min. The drones I mentioned about is
Phantom 4 Pro, Matrice 600 Pro, Sensefly ebee plus, Sensefly Ebee x, VTOL drone.

Speed Vs Endurance Graph image

The major consideration on choosing the drone type is peak between speed vs endurance. In the above
case VTOL wins. The maximum your drone stays is air is the maximum the data can be collected by the
drone.

Choosing the Camera

In high technical terms is to mean by RGB sensor is called the camera, usually people choose
RGB for mapping. Other camera like IR and multispectral also available, but in my case the mapping is
RGB. There are lots and lots of details to be considered on choosing the right camera for mapping, let
me create a separate blog for choosing the camera and factors to be considered in it. Here as the data to
be captured is for a vast area, we choose high Field of View camera with maximum large sensor size. So
the winning camera is Sony A7 RIII 42MP camera with nominal weight and 35mm lens. In later stage I
will say why I choose 35mm lens instead of 20mm. The Sony have very low noise in the pixel, so it
benefited me in large aspects.
The final decision on choosing the Drone and camera is Achieved by considering above aspects.
Choosing the drone for survey on project based is really important, In our case based on large mapping
area we have choosed VTOL drone and Sony A7 RIII 42MP camera.

To Be continued with Flight planning for large area and large data set processing. Stay tuned…