Automated Road Survey

Road surveying is still one of the process which include manual labour travelling distances carrying heavy equipment like total station and theodolites. To automate this process an Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) is built for road surveying.

The user has to input the take-off and landing GPS coordinates, the UAV autonomously flies from take-off point to final point, hovers at regular intervals, take reading using a high end single point LiDAR, and guides itself along the road. The UAV is also incorporated with return to home function, were in, after reaching the final point it flies to the higher altitude and returns back to the take-off point.

This entire process is achieved autonomously without using a remote controller. Camera and Image processing techniques are used for guiding the UAV. The entire project is built on open source software and Raspberry Pi as on board computer.