Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) as a data acquisition platform and as a measurement instrument are becoming attractive for many surveying applications in civil engineering.
Their performance, however, is not well understood for these particular tasks. The scope of the presented work is the performance evaluation of a UAV system that was built to rapidly and autonomously acquire mobile 3D mapping data.
Details to the components of the UAV system (hardware and control software) are explained. A novel program for photogrammetric flight planning and its execution for the generation of 3D point clouds from digital mobile images is explained.
A performance model for estimating the position error was developed and tested in several realistic construction environments. Test results are presented as they relate to large excavation and earth moving construction sites.
The experiences with the developed UAV system are useful to researchers or practitioners in need for successfully adapting UAV technology for their applications.
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