EVALUATING THE ACCURACY OF DEM GENERATION ALGORITHMS FROM UAV IMAGERY

In this work we evaluated how the use of different positioning systems affects the accuracy of Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) generated from aerial imagery obtained with Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). In this domain, state-of-the-art DEM generation algorithms suffer from typical errors obtained by GPS/INS devices in the position measurements associated with each picture obtained. The deviations from these measurements to real world positions are about meters. The experiments have been carried out using a small quadrotor in the indoor testbed at the Center for Advanced Aerospace Technologies (CATEC). This testbed houses a system that is able to track small markers mounted on the UAV and along the scenario with millimeter precision. This provides very precise position measurements, to which we can add random noise to simulate errors in different GPS receivers. The results showed that final DEM accuracy clearly depends on the positioning information.