Development of a UAV-MMS-Collaborative Aerial-to-Ground Remote Sensing System – A Preparatory Field Validation

This study proposed the development plan of a novel aerial-to-ground remote sensing (AGRS) system for surveying the land scenes of interest. Specifically, the AGRS system is composed by integrating an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) imaging system and a mobile mapping system (MMS), onboard whose platform a control station is also added. The UAV-MMS-collaboration can be classified into two modes - loosely and tightly, respectively related to two efficacy levels of the AGRS - fine-scale mapping in general and target investigating in special cases. The latter scenario can be illustrated by the tasks of fast-responses to the time-critical events, e.g., seeking the accessible roads into disaster areas. These all pose challenging issues. To ensure the premise for AGRS development, a field test was carried out in prior to examine the collaborative effect between its two RS-functional modules. Two typical topics were explored, i.e., self-indicated orthorectification of the UAV images and landcover classification based on information fusion. The final positive results have basically validated the feasibility of the development of the AGRS system.