RPAS AS A TOOL FOR THE RESEARCH, DOCUMENTATION AND MONITORING

摘要

This contribution deals with the fast growing industry of unmanned aerial systems (UAS, UAV or RPAS) and the use of their capabilities especially in archaeology and vegetation monitoring. The first part is focused on general information and the legislation of RPAS, the second part is about the methodology of RPAS data processing and results accuracy, and the last part deals with case projects in archaeology and the monitoring of biodiversity. RPAS (remote piloted aircraft systems) are gaining importance in mapping and monitoring tasks of our environment. At the CTU in Prague, projects in photogrammetry, archaeology and the monitoring of the biosphere, based on RPAS, were launched in 2011. The project's aim was to develop and verify simple and low-cost technology for the monitoring of small areas such as archaeological digs, historical objects and small orthophoto projects. Our research is also focused on camera settings and the evaluation of remote sensing methods for low cost RPAS. We found a very good solution in the eBee drone (good price-performance ratio) and multikopters. The EBee drone is equipped with two cameras (VIS and NIR). NDVI can be obtained by changing the cameras and conducting a second flight over the same area, which makes a little bit of a problem. In the near future, a miniature multispectral sensors and hyperspectral sensors will be applicable; it will be a great possibility for low cost research in intelligent and precise agriculture and biodiversity monitoring such as searching for new archaeological areas. In our first case project, our interest was in the use of RPAS for vegetation analysis and biodiversity documentation of the Bozidarske raseliniStfi Natural Reserve. The second case project is focused on the localization of archaeological objects based on vegetation indices using images taken in visible and near infrared channels. NDVI was computed from RPAS collected image data. A precision of results is discussed.