Production of road maps in highway projects by unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)

Abstract

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which are used in many areas of use today and are among the contemporary measurement systems, have recently been used in highway projects. In highway projects, there is a direct correlation between the accuracy and precision of the existing digital maps and the calculation of the geometric components of the horizontal and vertical (profile-long-section) lines of the project route, followed by the determination of the excavation filling amounts (cubage), also expressed as soil movement. The data collected by the unmanned aerial vehicle was used in this study to conduct research for the creation of route maps (strip data), which serve as the foundation for highway projects.  The study region, which was 2 km of the Mersin-Findikpinar Provincial Road project route, was part of the road system of the 5th Regional Directorate of Highways. According to the pre-determined flight plan, the UAV was flown at a height of 195 meters to capture 70% transverse and 85% longitudinal superimposed pictures in a 200 m wide corridor roughly 100 m to the right and 100 m to the left of the route chosen in the study area. A Digital Terrain Model and Route Map of the chosen corridor were created as a consequence of the photogrammetric analysis of these images. The volume computation was carried out using a sample highway project in a common area established between the high-accuracy 1/1000 scale baseline maps of the study area produced by the terrestrial method and the baseline maps produced by the UAV photogrammetry method. Digital Terrain Models (DTMs) have been contrasted. The location accuracy of the orthophoto map created by determining the coordinates of the detail points in the field with the RTK GPS technique was measured in addition to the YKN used as a reference, and an approximation cost comparison between the two techniques was made.