Hi All,
We regularly map an open pit mine and are having issues with some of the steeper, near vertical walls. Nothing has really changed in the way we’ve flown these missions however the data seems to be more gappy than ever.
We typically fly a horizontal grid mission over the area with 60/70 overlap and a fixed height above a DTM using the terrain follow function. We fly perpendicular to the wall with the camera directly down.
Hoping someone may be able to chime in and let us know how we can tweak either the drone capture or processing side of things to ensure we are getting complete coverage.
Mapping steep terrain, such as open pit mines, can indeed present challenges, especially when it comes to capturing the vertical walls effectively. To improve the coverage and reduce gaps in the data for such areas using PIX4Dmapper, consider the following adjustments to your image acquisition and processing strategy:
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Adjust Overlap : Increase the side overlap to at least 80% for areas with vertical structures. This ensures that there are enough common points between images for accurate reconstruction.
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Camera Angle : Instead of flying with the camera directly down, consider using an oblique angle to capture the walls. This will help in getting more details of the vertical features. You can fly additional missions around the pit with the camera angled at about 20 to 30 degrees from the nadir downward position.
