Detection of Gross Errors in the Elements of Exterior Orientation of Low-Cost UAV Images

In recent time we can observe growing interest of the photogrammetric products, which were made with using imagery acquired from low altitudes with the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). Due to the lower costs of UAV photogrammetry flight missions they are often attractive from the point of view of photogrammetry. In realization of photogrammetric flight missions at low altitude so far not completely resolved are too small accuracy of registration approximate exterior orientation of acquired images. The second very important aspect of accuracy of studies is fact, that software is not resistant to errors in the estimated elements of the exterior orientation parameters. The article presents a method of pre-adjustment gross errors detection in the measurement of projection centers. The method is largely based on the analysis of the results of two independent approaches: theoretical results of exterior orientation and alignment as a result of bundle block adjustment.

I. Introduction

In recent years the dynamic development of photogrammetry has been observed. It became popular to use data acquired from UAV mainly due to the low costs of realization photogrammetric flight mission compared to traditional photogrammetric flights [7], [14]. This issue is very important in photogrammetric and engineering applications. Some of them are described in worldwide publications. In [17] the technical analysis of the enterprise and it indicates methods for the optimization of UAV use in the elaborations related to hydraulic engineering structures was presented. In [19], [20] and [21] some investigations of image data fusion and UAV applications have been also proposed.