#Sidelap drone meaning software#

The surveyors that we work with are not running a research project they are running a business and need the drone to save them time and money so that they can be more profitable. However, if you want your drone program to take up less time and to cost less money, then use as little data as possible to get the results you need. So if your drone program doesn’t have a budget or any project deadlines, then, by all means, collect more data. We live in a world where human resources, software, and time all cost money, and more data takes more of all of these things.

#Sidelap drone meaning software#

Adding more data means that a project will take more time in the field, take more time to process, use more data on computers and tax networks, and will be more challenging to manage in the various software programs utilized in the data processing workflow.

There IS definitely such a thing as too much data! Proper mission planning certainly helps to manage processing time. Plan the mission right the first time, and avoid extra flights These missteps burn time in the field and can 4x your processing time in the office while adding no value to the end product. The more overlap there is, the more erroneous matches the software can make, leading to potentially less accurate data overall. Not only does this increase photo amount, and thus processing time exponentially, it also adds a lot of noise to the data. There is a common misconception that the higher the overlap, the better data will be collected. There are a few exceptions to this, such as highly repetitive land, like crops and dense vegetation, but for the vast majority of projects, additional overlap provides little to no benefit. Instead, it causes an increase in field time, and a massive increase in data processing time, with no measurable benefit in accuracy. At Aerotas, we have done significant testing on these different types of flight patterns and found almost no improvement in survey accuracy for the vast majority of projects. These recommendations are in contrast to more popular suggestions of higher overlap, multiple cross-hatch flight patterns, and off-nadir or oblique imagery. There is a time and place for each overlap setting, but our recommended overlap is 75% front-lap and 75% side-lap for almost every project, with a single set of back and forth flight lines (boustrophedonic lawnmower pattern), and the camera pointing straight down ( nadir) on all photos. There are many options for photo overlap, and we have tested them all.

Lawnmower (boustrophedonic) flight path, no cross-hatch