Drone Survey

A drone can survey large land mass and industrial site areas in a shorter time frame than on foot. Inaccessible areas such as roofs, rock faces and ravines can be measured in full. Combining images from the ground, building elevations can be captured in superior detail for general and heritage purposes.

Orange drone in flight over a landslip adjacent to a windy road through moorland.
Drone flight over a landslip – Wathgill

A mosaic of overlapping photographs are taken from specific angles to capture the subject. Sophisticated software analyses the images for corresponding geometry to tie images together. With the known characteristics of the camera lens, distance can be calculated. Ground control point targets are distributed in the scene and measured in a coordinate system, to scale and georeference the data.

Colour mesh of a hair pin bend and ravine.
3D mesh the landslip scene – Wathgill

Land project meshes are used for surface, volume and hydrology analysis.

2D coloured line work map drawing of a road hairpin with steep embankments indicated by contour lines.
2D topographical survey drawing created from drone data – Wathgill

A standard 2D topographical survey drawing with sections was produced for this project.

3D model of Ryelands House with drone camera positions shown in 3D space.
3D model of Ryelands House – Lancaster

High resolution 3-dimensional textured mesh and point clouds are created. This data can be used as reference to create 3D models in Autodesk Revit and for 2D line work in AutoCAD software.

2D line work drawing of a complicated roof on a black background.
2D CAD Roof Plan of Ryelands House – Lancaster

Roof plan created to plan repair work.

3D model view of rural landscape
Rural Landscape – Ravenstonedale

This watercourse re-meandering project scene is brought to the desktop for design visual reference and data extraction.