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research article

Airborne sensor fusion: Expected accuracy and behavior of a concurrent adjustment

Mouzakidou, Kyriaki  
•
Brun, Aurélien Arnaud  
•
Cucci, Davide Antonio  
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February 22, 2024
ISPRS Open Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing

Tightly-coupled sensor orientation, i.e. the simultaneous processing of temporal (GNSS and raw inertial) and spatial (image and lidar) constraints in a common adjustment, has demonstrated significant improvement in the quality of attitude determination with small inertial sensors. This is particularly beneficial in kinematic laser scanning on lightweight aerial platforms, such as drones, which employ direct sensor orientation for the spatial interpretation of laser vectors. In this study, previously reported preliminary results are extended to assess the gain in accuracy of sensor orientation through leveraging all available spatio-temporal constraints in a dynamic network i) with a commercial IMU for drones and ii) with simultaneous processing of raw-observations of several low-quality IMUs. Additionally, we evaluate the influence of different types of spatial constraints (image 2D and point-cloud 3D tie-points) and flight geometries (with and without a cross flight line). We present the newly implemented estimation of confidence levels and compare those with the observed residual errors. The empirical evidence demonstrates that the use of spatial constraints increases the attitude accuracy of the derived trajectory by a factor of 2–3, both for the commercial and low-quality IMUs, while at the same time reducing the dispersion of geo-referencing errors, resulting in a considerably more precise and self-coherent geo-referenced point-cloud. We further demonstrate that the use of image constraints (additionally to lidar constraints) stabilizes the in-flight lidar boresight estimation by a factor of 3–10, establishing the feasibility of such estimation even in the absence of special calibration patterns or calibration targets.

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Type
research article
DOI
10.1016/j.ophoto.2023.100057
Author(s)
Mouzakidou, Kyriaki  
Brun, Aurélien Arnaud  
Cucci, Davide Antonio  
Skaloud, Jan  
Date Issued

2024-02-22

Published in
ISPRS Open Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing
Volume

12

Issue

April

Article Number

100057

Subjects

Sensor-fusion

•

Lidar

•

Photogrammetry

•

Geo-referencing

•

UAVs

•

ESOLAB

•

topomapp

Editorial or Peer reviewed

REVIEWED

Written at

EPFL

EPFL units
CRYOS  
FunderGrant Number

H2020

101004255

CTI/Innosuisse

53622.1

Available on Infoscience
March 6, 2024
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/205817
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