UAS for Remote Sensing - Terrain Extraction

Because the UAS imagery is acquired in stereo, we can extract terrain models or digital surface models (DSM) from the imagery. We are currently evaluating products at two levels of details: a coarser terrain model at 1-2m resolution, which reflects the general terrain, and a dense DSM based on a 3D point cloud extracted at the pixel level, which has potential for deriving vegetation heights.

UAS image mosaic (left), digital terrain model (top right), hillshade (bottom right).

Portion of UAS image mosaic (left), dense digital surface model derived from 3D point cloud (middle), and hillshade (right). The yellow arrow points to a shrub visible in the DSM and hillshade.

3D visualization of the 3D point cloud extracted from stereo UAS imagery over an 80m x 80m area.