Topographic Survey at Small-scale Open-pit Mines using a Popular Rotary-wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (Drone)

This study carried out a topographic survey at a small-scale open-pit limestone mine in Korea (the Daesung MDI Seoggyo office) using a popular rotary-wing unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV, Drone, DJI Phantom2 Vision+). 89 sheets of aerial photos could be obtained as a result of performing an automatic flight for 30 minutes under conditions of 100m altitude and 3m/s speed. A total of 34 million cloud points with X, Y, Z-coordinates was extracted from the aerial photos after data processing for correction and matching, then an orthomosaic image and digital surface model with 5m grid spacing could be generated. A comparison of the X, Y, Z-coordinates of 5 ground control points measured by differential global positioning system and those determined by UAV photogrammetry revealed that the root mean squared errors of X, Y, Z-coordinates were around 10cm. Therefore, it is expected that the popular rotary-wing UAV photogrammetry can be effectively utilized in small-scale open-pit mines as a technology that is able to replace or supplement existing topographic surveying equipments.