Using low-cost UAVs in post-mining exploration - a case study

The use of low-cost, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has been growing in many sectors. Due to the sufficient accuracy of the products acquired from UAVs, this technology has also been applied in geodesy and remote sensing. It results from many factors: the low prices of UAVs and the availability of different sensors and software applications, which allows for simple data processing. Due to the required high accuracy, the inventory of a mine is usually performed with the use of conventional surveying techniques, such as tacheometry. This paper discusses the possibilities of applying low-cost UAVs to inventory open-cut mining. Using Phantom 3 Professional equipped with a factory-made camera, RGB photographs were acquired, which were then processed using three commercial software applications: Pix4D, 3D Survey and Agisoft Metashape. Different algorithms for image orientation (Structure-from-Motion, SfM) and dense point generation (Multi-View Stereo, MVS) were implemented for each of those applications, which influenced the accuracy of the final products. The results of the experiments proved that the highest accuracy in terms of photograph processing was achieved using the Pix4D softw