Analysis of Positional and Geometric Accuracy of Objects in Survey with Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)

This study aimed the analysis of the positional and geometric accuracy of objects in orthomosaics obtained through different unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) data processing software covering an area located within Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos - UNISINOS in São Leopoldo, RS. A total of nine ground control points (GCP) and twenty checkpoints were surveyed in order register and classify the processed orthomosaics according to the cartographic accuracy standard - Padrão de Exatidão Cartográfica (PEC). Four software was employed to process the UAV data: Pix4D mapper, Agisoft PhotoScan, Menci APS and Bentley Context Capture. The results obtained from each software were compared and identified the smallest distortions when processing with and without ground control points. The flight was executed at a height of 90m with 60% sidelap and 80% overlap using an ST800 UAV equipped with a Sony NEX-7 small format non-metric camera with 24 megapixels resolution. The software GeoPEC was used to classify the orthomosaics according to PEC. For data processed with ground control points all orthomosaics were classified “Class A” in 1/500 scale, however, only Menci APS did not present a trend line via t-student test. On the other hand, Menci APS presented the worst results without the ground control points. In processing with GCP, all orthomosaics obtained optimum results with an approximated error of 2,5 m
²
, about 0.03% of the area.