Using a drone for land measurements

[Tejas Jake]

I am new to this site and I have a question.

Is there any way to use a drone to measure footage on the ground. We are a construction company and we have a need to measure long distances on the ground in areas that are hard to access. Is there any applications or hardware available that will allow us to measure, accurately and reliably, using a drone?

Any feedback is greatly appreciated.

Thanks

 

[N017RW]

Are you in the USA?
What do you define as a 'long distance' and accuracy?

Your requirements may well exceed FAA altitude and LOS operation requirements.

Not exactly what you asked for, but... have you tried Google Earth?

 

[jbrown630]

Are you in the USA?
What do you define as a 'long distance' and accuracy?

Your requirements may well exceed FAA altitude and LOS operation requirements.

Not exactly what you asked for, but... have you tried Google Earth?

As it's a construction company I would imagine the measurements could involve distances and landmarks that would be recent additions to the area, and not shown on google earth.

 

[N017RW]

As it's a construction company I would imagine the measurements could involve distances and landmarks that would be recent additions to the area, and not shown on google earth.

Distance doesn't change, landmarks may be topographical.
I'll wait for the OP to clarify.

Thanks anyway, for ???

 

[r62ewa]

You can download a trial version of Pix4D and process your UAV captured images and perform measurements. Or you could use a cloud service, such as Maps Made Easy or DroneDeploy, upload your images and they process them and return you the result. An orthomosaic is one of the results which you can use to perform your own measurements, both linear and volumetric.

 

[BigAl07]

Welcome to the forum

Short Answer - Yes
Long/Realistic Answer - Maybe depending on exactly how large of an area we are talking about and how accurate the calcs need to be.

r62ewa nailed it though.

Always make sure you're following Federal ,state, and local laws/regulations in terms of using these as part of a business.

 

[Erised]

If you take a picture directly above the locations you want to pinpoint you can later look at the pictures on your computer and open the properties of the photo. In the properties you have the gps location up to 15 decimal points, this is fairly acurate. If you pin these locations on google earth then mesure between the points you will get a fairly good measurment. This is no survey accuracy but may be enough for your needs.