Choosing the Right Mapping Drone for Your Business

Drones make it possible to capture various types of imagery across the light spectrum. But that doesn’t mean every drone comes ready to meet the challenges of your business off the shelf.

In order to capture the right types of data you may need to purchase additional sensors, cameras, or hardware components. If you’ve read part one of this series and still have questions about aerial imagery and cameras, then this post is for you.

In this post, we’ll walk through the various types of imagery you’re able to capture using a drone, and help you understand the types of cameras you should purchase to meet your business needs. Let’s get started.

Using cameras and sensors attached to a drone, you can capture different types of light across the electromagnetic spectrum. From visible light, to thermal infrared imagery, it’s important to understand the different types of imagery and their industry uses. While construction or surveying users may only require a standard camera, an Ag user may require a near infrared (NIR) camera to evaluate crop health. The illustration below explains where the different types of imagery fall on the electromagnetic spectrum.

Visible Spectrum (RGB)

This is the most common type of imagery captured. RGB images are generally used in surveying, mapping and GIS missions where a high-definition surface model or 3D point cloud are required. This type of image is produced using the digital camera sensor that comes with most drones available on the market today, and is the color spectrum people are most used to viewing in standard photographs.

Near Infrared (NIR)

NIR imagery is most frequently used in precision agriculture in order to calculate plant vegetation health. NIR has the highest level of reflectance of the light bands. NIR-capable cameras make it possible to identify the reflectance of light from vegetation, which strongly correlates with the level of chlorophyll present in the plant. Plants with more chlorophyll reflect a higher amount of NIR light than unhealthy plants, making it possible to identify plants in poor health.

Thermal

Thermal imagery is used across a variety of industries and use cases ranging from agriculture, to construction, to inspection, and surveying. This type of imagery detects heat signatures from the environment to identify the range of temperature present in an image. This can help identify “hot spots” in images in order to inspect roofs, roadways, and even identify wet spots from irrigation in crop fields.

Cameras

Cameras make it possible to capture imagery across the electromagnetic spectrum. Now that you have an understanding of the various types of imagery at your disposal, let’s discuss the different cameras that make it possible to capture image data. Most drone models come with a camera off the shelf, but you may need to invest in additional camera accessories to support your business use case. Let’s explore the different types of cameras on the market.

RGB

RGB — or standard — cameras capture Red, Green, and Blue light. This is the camera type that comes stock with most drone models. These are multipurpose photo and video cameras that can be used to make high-definition 2D orthomosaic maps as well as 3D models for any industry. Additionally, they can be paired with plant health algorithms such as the Visible Atmospherically Resistant Index (VARI) to assess plant health and crop stress in precision agriculture use cases.

Buy the highest quality camera you can afford

Higher quality camera sensors produce higher resolution photos with greater pixel density, which means you get more accurate maps. What exactly does resolution have to do with map accuracy? Put simply, increasing the resolution of an image decreases its ground sampling distance (GSD), or in other words, it reduces the space between individual pixels in an image. Because drone mapping software like Drone Deploy processes maps by taking a series of individual images and matching the common points between them, the more common points that can be matched, the higher the accuracy of the map. An image with a more pixels contains more information, which means there is a greater probability of matching common points. We recommend purchasing a drone with a 12.3-megapixel camera or higher for drone mapping projects.

Buy a camera with a mechanical shutter

Many out-of-the-box drone cameras use a rolling shutter. This means that the camera records each frame line-by-line from top to bottom. When taking videos or photographs, this helps reduce motion blur. However, it can also sometimes cause what’s known as “rolling shutter effect,” where surfaces in a photograph appear warped because the camera-object relation changed before the full image was recorded. An image that is warped in this way makes it difficult for drone mapping software to match points on a map, which negatively affects the map’s accuracy. Purchasing a drone camera with a mechanical shutter helps solve this problem, because the sensor records all of the lines of the frame nearly simultaneously, rather than line-by-line.

3 ways mapping drones give you faster job site data

Did you know that mapping drones can save their businesses both time and money on aerial surveying of industrial, construction, mining and energy jobs sites using aerial mapping drone?

Data Collection on Demand

Using a drone negates the need to charter a survey team, helicopter or fixed-wing aircraft, which can often take six-to-eight weeks to book and cost over $10,000. A drone is always ready to go and is 200x faster than traditional surveying methods, and still delivers within 1% of LiDAR  sub-centimeter accuracy.

Efficient Flights

Drone can be programmed to automatically map sites with the most efficient flight path, more quickly and accurately than can be done by a human pilot. Its size and nimbleness also enables it to fly through air space unreachable by a manned helicopter or airplane.

Turnaround Time

Finally, with a drone you don’t have to wait weeks for processing your mapping data. Job site conditions are constantly changing which means old data is usually wrong data. Situational awareness and near real-time data can save you hundreds of thousands of dollars in project delays and cost overruns. A drone allows you to learn current conditions in just a few hours and have updated information daily if you so desire.

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