Photogrammetry for the 21st Century

Before I get to the good stuff, I'll bore you with some history...

I've always liked Airplanes. I glued painted plastic models in grade school and attempted control line flying and RC flying in high school. I built balsa gliders from scratch and can still fold a mean paper airplane. Even though I never really 'got off the ground' with model airplanes like I wanted to, I pursued a college education in Aviation at Purdue. I have my pilot's license and even an Airframe and Powerplant mechanics license. (I've not use any of those licenses for almost 20 years.)  I worked in an aerial photography company, Dickerson Aerial Survey, in Lafayette, IN during and after college. I now work at an engineering firm compiling information from Aerial surveys and photos. I think it's time for all this history to come together.

Here's what I'm thinking....

There is software called Photomodeler and a more sophisticated version called Photomodeler Scanner.
http://www.photomodeler.com/products/pm-scanner.htm
There are other programs as well, but I'm familiar with PhotoModeler.
These softwares can take images and create 3D virtual models of those images. We've used PhotoModeler in our company a few times with limited success.  The Scanner version takes multiple images and more automatically builds a surface model. PhotoModeler is more of a manual, click, click, click process to match points to points among several different photos.

Now, couple this software with some nice Radio Controlled airplanes and you may have some inexpensive cartography going on. This is what an Australian company, Aerial Photography Specialists does.
http://www.apspecialists.com.au/

Maybe not so inexpensive, however. MicroDrones are fully autonomous quadcopters with GPS.. These puppies can cost $30,00 to $50,000 once you include the swiveling camera mount, camera (video or still), controls, software, and base station. As you can guess, these are not toys. A user can trace a 3D path with the software and these quadcopters will automatically fly that path and take your photos.

Couple all this to get a bunch of data points, then use Autodesk's Civil 3D and you can produce some accurate contour maps. I'm thinking that each flight, and transportation to the site has got to be less expensive than flying a real plane, with two people in it. I'll have to do more research on this.

Now, how about a cheaper version?  Search on YouTube for FPV (First Person View) flight. People are placing small video cameras (about $60) and transmitters (another $100) on Radio control planes and having fun. In my opinion, a more productive use would be to get a QuadCopter. Something like this, http://store.scoutuav.com/products-page/robots/airframes/scout-3-arf-kit-2/. There are several kinds out there that have adequate payload capacities for a camera. Most all of them can carry the little video cameras mentioned above.

So, for under a thousand dollars, you can have your own aerial photography business. For $30,000 to $50,000 you can be a real professional.

Who's in?