Drone Mapping for Construction: Complete Guide

this construction site is home to a future 500 000 square foot warehouse and today we are going to be using drone mapping technology to more effectively track site progress and plan for the next phase of construction we'll be covering a wide range of topics from what is an orthomosaic drone map the benefits of using drones to map construction sites and a detailed walkthrough of how to map a construction site using a drone so if you work at a construction company and are thinking of implementing drone maps and don't know where to start or if you're a pilot looking to get into aerial mapping from a beginner position this video is for you in simple terms an orthomosaic map involves puzzling together hundreds or even thousands of drone images sometimes called ortho photos into a finalized map that actually perfectly reflects the geographic area these maps differ from regular drone photos as the ortho photos are geometrically corrected to remove lens distortion camera tilt and elevation changes this makes orthomosaic maps an accurate representation of the earth's surface on par with satellite images however there are many advantages of drone maps compared to using google earth as the quality is fairly superior and the data is current compared to outdated satellite photos now that the map has been orthorectified it can even function as an accurate tool for measuring true distances in areas of land from post construction to the final inspection drone mapping can streamline every stage of a construction project drone maps can also help engineering and survey teams achieve accurate topography surveys locate drainage spots vegetation and waterways it's apparent that construction projects are big operations with dozens of parties involved from clients investors contractors and workers with all these people having good communication is crucial for reducing mistakes and finishing the job according to the schedule one of the biggest reasons our clients utilize frequent drone maps is because of how easy it is to share and discuss the data they often put the map on a projector during meetings to point out specific areas and plan for the upcoming phases and many times stakeholders will actually be located overseas or across the country so they can't really come visit the site in person but these maps allow them to actually keep tabs on the project and visualize the work being done another way orthomosaic maps improve communication is overlaid cad drawings this allows for a comparison if the utilities drainage pavement etc are located in the correct area photographic documentation is nothing new in construction as it's been required and contracts for a while now what is new is periodic drone maps are actually being used to monitor progress and keep records since the orthomosaic map covers the entire site it serves as direct photo evidence for any potential conflicts that do come up disputes about work progression extensions of time and delay are common on these projects and if the necessary records are unavailable or incomplete disputes can become more involved expensive and time consuming however when you have drone documentation it'll be much harder for any of the parties to dispute issues like this down the line and can often avoid the complex in the first place project managers also have the ability to make more strategic and quick decisions when there are drones monitoring progress on a weekly or monthly basis safety risks of on-site materials potential or pending change orders work endurances and the list goes on these can all be identified with aerial maps and if you want to learn more about how drones are being used to monitor construction progress we actually have an entire video on that subject which you can view next by clicking the link below now that you know the different ways orthomosaic maps are beneficial for construction we're going to be covering step by step exactly how to fly and create an orthomosaic map at construction slate and if you don't have a drone yet or know if your model is properly equipped for mapping we actually have a really comprehensive guide on our website which covers the best drones for construction which includes a few of our top picks for mapping [Music] we personally like drone deploy and we'll be using the program for the rest of the video but there are many options available so it's always best to do your own research and find one that suits your needs and a quick side note if you're enjoying the video so far please give it a thumbs up it helps us make more educational content like this in the future now before we get into different flight settings and flying the drone mission i want you to preface that if you're looking for survey grade maps where you can measure true distances calculate elevation and stockpiles for example you will need ground control points rtk base stations an understanding of absolute and relative accuracy scale constraints and much more today i'm just walking you through the basics of orthomosaic drone maps that are used for visual representations and documentation purposes only so if you work at a construction company and are thinking of outsourcing a drone pilot to make orthomosaic maps which you plan to get any kind of measurement from you'll want to ask them questions on how they are collecting the data whether they are or are working with a licensed surveyor and what their post-processing workflows look like so be sure and research your own state laws and regulations before hiring someone to produce survey grade drone maps or if you are a pilot looking to advertise mapping services okay so now let's get started in the drone to play app but i did want to mention that the settings that we were about to cover they can change depending on your project or if drone deploy adds or removes features okay now i am in the drone deploy application on my ipad and the first thing that we're going to do is click on project that's a little blue button and then from here you're going to type in your address at the top or just zoom out on the map and find your site and once we're at the site we're going to click on create project here and then we can name it and now on the left side we're going to click on maps and models and this big box is going to appear so this these green lines on this box are actually the path that the drone is going to be taking during the flight so what we're going to have to do is move these little white dots around our site so we can cover all the area that all the area that we want for the ortho mosaic and if your site isn't as square as mine and you kind of need to move the lines around some more i just click on these little plus icons you can make more dots and then move them however you like and you can delete them by clicking on the dot again and now looking at the top left here with this panel you're going to have these three little dots and if you click on that you can actually rename this exact mission and then if you click on this little plus icon then you can have multiple different drone missions within the same site so now this drop down appears and you can select between the two and so this is really useful if say you want to do a mapping mission at say 300 feet and then you want to do one at 200 feet or if you want to make it a little bit of a different area and say i only want to map say this little section right here compared to the entire site on this one and moving on to the different flight settings so first off we have the altitude so this really modifies and impacts the resolution of the map and a number of inches per pixel um and how fast or slow the flight will be so we can see right now 200 feet i am at 0.5 inches per pixel and if i move this number uh then we can see how that changes and as well as how many batteries the flight is going to take how many images um how many minutes the the flight will be and this can all really depend and all these green lines again is where the drone will be flying so um if you're going to be at a lower res uh lower altitude it's going to take a lot longer to do this flight so if i want to say this uh like around 360 feet then there's only going to be a couple passes and you might be asking but the lower altitude flight at say 110 feet then the data is going to be much more comprehensive and it's going to be more detail in the map but unfortunately this actually isn't always the case so the first thing is when the software is actually stitching together the images to make the map there is going to be less unique features in each photo to help distinguish its location think of this as if you were doing a puzzle where you're going to be looking for pieces that actually look the same and match up together so if you were doing a puzzle of say a farm field where each piece is so identical that you're basically guessing every time this can this is actually what can happen during the post-processing as there isn't enough features in each photograph to match them up together the lower altitudes can also result in more motion blur in the camera as well as the need for way more batteries and flight time we usually stick at the recommended 200 feet during our orthomosaic maps but this can really vary especially if there are obstacles nearby that are that tall like nearby cell towers uh power lines and sequoia trees okay maybe you don't have to really deal with sequoia trees on a daily basis but if you live in california and for some reason you're making an orthomosaic map of sequoia national park definitely keep your eyes peeled now moving on right next to the altitude we actually have a little circle with a mountain on it if you click on that so that's actually the selection for the terrain awareness this is a feature that actually lets you view the drone path as it compares to your terrain and it also allows you to achieve improved map quality with equal resolution so it decreases the likelihood of missing some sections at higher elevations also a quick note that this feature is only available on ios devices right now the next option here is enhanced 3d so this actually are these crisscross lines that go across the flight plan here and so this is really good if you're doing 3d models so for us right now since we're just doing 2d orthomosaics we're not going to need this so we can turn this off live preview or live map is a really great way to instantly view your map even when you don't have a cell service or internet connection so it actually takes the video feed right from your drone to visualize the orthomosaic when the drone is flying this feature is also currently only available on ios devices as well now moving into advanced right here we have automatic settings so this is really great for beginners or if you're just experimenting with orthomosaic maps then you can keep this on but for today since we're doing this full a walkthrough we're going to turn that off looking at the front and side overlap so this percentage is actually how much each photo is going to be overlapping on one another when they're being taken and so this is really important for when you're doing the post processing for when you're stitching together all these photos to make the map the more overlap you have the more easier it is for the software to match up each picture these percentages can often change depending on the mission but drone deploy does recommend at least 70 percent for front overlaps and 60 for side ones now changing the flight direction can really assist if you're mapping a narrow piece of land so the drone will be able to save more battery life and it can also help out if there's some strong winds and you want the drone to be facing a specific orientation but ultimately this number is going to change every single flight so you just have to experiment for the best approach for every mission the flight speed is typically always set at the maximum value and you want to keep it at this unless you're going to be flying in some low light conditions the starting waypoint will actually change where the drone begins the mapping mission so if you would like to start at a specific location um or continue where you left off before then you can select this area and then that's where the drone will start from so when doing orthomosaics we want the drone to be capturing neater images which means the camera is going to be pointed straight down at a 90 degree angle also the drone is going to automatically move the gimbal pitch down to 90 degrees or whatever you specify here once it reaches the mapping altitude so there's no input needed from the pilot and moving on since we are not going to be doing 3d models we're going to turn off a perimeter 3d and cross hatch i recommend you keep the obstacle avoidance on however you should always determine your mocha or minimum obstacle clearance altitude before every flight definitely don't rely on obstacle avoidance and sensors to actually save you during the possibility of a collision it's always the responsibility of the pilot to avoid any obstacles and have a safe operation offline maps is really useful as it allows you to actually save your map for use without cell service or internet connection but a quick note if you have any of these offline maps do not sign out of drone deploy on your application as the maps will not be available offline anymore when you sign back in show existing map will actually overlay a previously flown orthomosaic map underneath this new flight plan this can be really beneficial to see where the previous borders of the generated map were and if you may need to adjust your flight plan to capture any more area the low light setting will actually increase the camera's iso for brighter images as we mentioned before just remember that for flight speed it's recommended that that is decreased when flying in these dim environments setting manual exposure as well as manual focus and dji go actually allows you to change the camera settings to your required specifications personally i usually have these settings turned off but it can be useful in certain situations where the images might be blown out and overexposed like on a white rooftop and if you choose to shoot manually all you have to do is actually fly up to your mapping altitude using dgi go select your settings and then come back down land and then you can start mapping with drone deploy and typically there's no need to actually select the planning camera as this will automatically update once you connect the drone now going back into the standard settings at the bottom here you can actually see drone deploys integration with airbus where you can actually view and request authorization if you're flying within a restricted airspace and now that we have all the settings done we can actually see at the top here of the estimated amount of time the flight will take the number of images that will be taken the batteries as well as how many acres are gonna be covered and when doing these flight plans it's actually best practice to do this all when you're still at the office before arriving at the site and then so you can just get there and just start flying immediately so now we are going to connect the drone and get ready for takeoff but before we actually do that we're going to hard quit drone deploy and then we are going to open dji go and check the firmware ensuring that the compass and imu do not need to be calibrated and that there is enough satellite coverage and once everything looks good we're going to hard quick dji go and open drone deploy again and remember that the drone is going to be autonomously flying the flight path and the camera is going to be facing down towards the ground so you won't be able to actually see what's going on in front of you unless your drone has one of those fpv cameras equipped um so this is why you need to be certain that you've checked for obstacles in the area okay so now we're going to start our pre-flight checklist with this blue button down here and before we press take off we're going to verify our signals of remaining sd card storage and battery level at the top once everything is good we're going to take off and the drone is going to start flying to the starting position okay so now the drone is going to be flying the flight path and taking some photos but just keep in mind that you still have to pay attention and be alert uh during this even though it's all autonomous you'll want to keep an eye on the battery voltages gps connection signal strength to the controller and especially birds trust me birds do not like drones now looking at the camera view we can actually see these trees are really gorgeous right now we're doing this map in mid-november and this will definitely make the map look even better and by the way this is what i was talking about with the drone not being able to see what's in front of you which is why it's so important to understand mocha so i can't move the camera at all to see where it's going since i have to be taking all these photos pointed straight down another consideration if the site is really big or has a lot of structures blocking the view is you want to have a centralized takeoff location and looking at the top here we can actually see how low my signal is right now even though i'm only around 900 feet away from the drone but this is because of these huge concrete walls that are right in front of me which can easily block so much of this communication and look and looking back this may have not been the best spot to take off but this is you know some stuff that you really have to keep in mind uh when you're at these sites when doing orthomosaic maps full overcast days are always the best for flying as the clouds act as a big light diffuser this makes it so there isn't any harsh shadows on the camera and then the white balance stays consistent a one piece of equipment you do not want to skimp out on is high quality sd cards since hundreds or thousands of images will be taken at very frequent intervals you're going to need something that can write quickly as well as have a large capacity around 64 through 128 gigabytes should be good and i'll link below actually my preferred sd card that i use when doing drone mapping during flight you also want to have visual line of sight with the drone actually just last week when i was here at the site uh setting up all my equipment a plane flew overhead at around 500 feet which was way too close for comfort if i was actually up there taking of some wide-angle shots of the site uh maybe 400 feet for example there are many ways to pause or cancel the mission during flight if you need to uh the pause button up here at the top right will temporarily stop the drone and have it hover in place until you click on resume again and the controller icon on the left side here will stop the flight allowing you to take manual control of the drone and the red button above that is to return the home which will also stop the mission and have the drone autonomously fly back to this take-off spot and if your tablet or app crashes when you're flying and you can't click on these buttons you can actually quickly change the the flight mode on the side of the controller to take manual control of the drone or press the return home button on the controller as well to have it come back and land so that pretty much concludes this map and all you have to do next is upload all these images right after the flight from the tablet or you can do it when you get back at the office on the computer okay so now the drone is about to finish up and it's going to automatically start flying back to the home point and come in for a landing i usually take manual control at this point and recommend that you do the same but for fun let's see how accurate this landing is going to be from the pad so that concludes today's video on orthomosaic drone maps and construction and if you still want to learn more about the benefits and unique ways these maps are being used at construction sites definitely take a look at our comprehensive drone mapping article that i'll link below there's a lot of information i did not cover in this video and if you want to chat with us about coming out to some of your sites then you can schedule a phone call with a member of our team on our website also if you have any questions always feel free to shoot me a direct message on linkedin i'm always happy to help out any way i can but anyways please give the video a thumbs up and subscribe for more content like this and as always thanks for watching and i'll talk to you again soon [Music] [Music] you

Channel: The Drone Life

Views: 759

Keywords: drone mapping, orthomosaic map, dronedeploy, drone map, drone construction map, drone survey, how to use a drone for mapping, drone 3D mapping, what is an orthomosaic

Id: OkhuTr9YkNk

Length: 19min 43sec (1183 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 17 2021