Flying a grain elevator and silo

[fishnetdrone]

Hi all! I have an interesting potential job of scanning a grain elevator and silos. The highest points are about 190 ft, so a terrestrial scanner just isn't going to cut it. I'd be curious to know the best practices of doing a structure like this. Is it better to fly in a rotational pattern and go up in "levels" to the top? Or....does it make more sense to fly vertical sides and create side to side overlap? I'm looking for recommendations for software to handle this type of thing, too.

 

[jaja6009]

Agisoft Metashape Professional

Use its excellent Map Flight Planner feature.

1. Fly the site with a quick double gird oblique mission, 65/65.
2. Have Agisoft Flight planner use the 3D model from the above mission to make a custom flight plan where you can choose the distance to point of interest.
3. Fly mission, then process in Agisoft.

This method ensures an extrmely close to object mission with a mind blowing GSD, stitches well since Agisoft uses your camera's parameters to ensure proper coverage.
Best of all you have optimal images taken so you don't have excess images and therefore processing time.
In a comparison, other image collection strategies worked, but this worked just as well, had a more uniform GSD and had up to 30% less images taken.

Finally the flight plan created can be set to avoid obstacles, set distances to point of interest as well has hazards, even power lines.