PHOTOGRAMMETRIC ENGINEERING & REMOTE SENSING
December 2016
909
I
ntroduction
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV, UAS, Drones) will soon be flying all around us
for enjoyment, film making, mapping, and performing tasks deemed dangerous
or impossible to achieve previously. With the release of the Federal Aviation Ad-
ministration (FAA) Part 107 rules for small UAS, the use of commercial drones
will rapidly increase in the fall of 2016 through 2017. The massive number of
UAVs and sensors currently available and soon to be released will help drive down
prices for high quality vehicles and sensors. In 2015, Forbes reported that the economic
impact of the commercial UAS sector on the US to be $2.3 billion in 2015 and will rise to
over $5 billion by 2016 (McCarthy, 2015). Much of this will be seen in the sale of UAV
and sensors for UAVs.
In May of 2016, the NPD Group, Inc. reported that sales through April of 2016 had
tripled for the same period the previous year. The group estimated $200 million in sales
for the period (Shen, 2016). With the introduction of the new Part 107 rule, the sales to-
tals are sure to expand even further. The FAA forecasts that the number of commercial
drones will increase from 0.6 million to 2.7 million by 2020 with the markets of Aerial
Photography, Inspection and Agriculture accounting for 83% of the commercial space
(Federal Aviation Administration, 2016). These are all markets that include geospatial
services.
With the likelihood of products and services, which in the past have been performed by
photogrammetrists, surveyors, or engineers now being performed by end users, an eval-
uation of the threat to the industry and currently accepted conventions should be per-
formed by each institution. For Keystone Aerial Surveys, Inc. (Keystone), this effort led
to a determination that there is a need to differentiate its services by its professionalism
(i.e., insurance, training, etc.), safety, knowledge of ever changing rules, and the ability
to create products with assured accuracy. In pursuit of consistently providing accurate
products, Keystone embarked on an ambitious project to obtain multiple datasets from
several sensors of the same location for comparison and study. The following document
details the planning, execution and findings of this testing.
Accuracy of UAS
Photogrammetry:
A Comparative
Evaluation
By David Day, Wes Weaver, and Lucas Wilsing, Keystone Aerial
Surveys, Inc.
Photogrammetric Engineering & Remote Sensing
Vol. 82, No. 12, December 2016, pp. 909–914.
0099-1112/16/909–914
© 2016 American Society for Photogrammetry
and Remote Sensing
doi: 10.14358/PERS.82.12.909
