Flight Planning
Flight planning is essential to ensuring quality data is being acquired during each mission. A proper flight plan can increase accuracy, reduce acquisition time, reduce processing time/troubleshooting, and make certain that we are achieving full coverage over the area of interest. Phoenix LiDAR Systems' Flight Planner software is the perfect way to effectively and efficiently plan waypoints and to ensure quality data capture.
Flight Pattern
The recommended flight pattern is a grid with parallel flight lines that have the right amount of overlap at a constant height over the terrain. Refer to the Flight Guidance section for more information on our Flight Planning Software.
Flight Speed
The recommended flying speed for optimum data capture via UAV is usually between 6 and 8 ms. Of course this is just a rule of thumb, as factors like desired point density, LiDAR and camera field-of-view, wind conditions, height and flighttime restrictions all influence each other.
Point cloud accuracy can decrease with increased vehicle vibrations, so its important to find the right speed to fly so the aircraft always flies smoothly. Navigation system accuracy can also decrease when moving very slowly, because the GNSS/IMU data fusion benefits from observing dynamics in the IMU measurements.
Point Density
There are a few ways to increase point density:
Reduce flight velocity
Decrease AGL (Above Ground Level)
Increase PRR (Pulse Repetition Rate)
Only an option on some miniRanger and Ranger models
We recommend utilizing RIEGL's RiParameter to determine optimal PRR
Increase lateral overlap between flightlines
Increasing Motor RPM (Scout models) can influence point distribution, but will not affect point density
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