Optimal Workflow for Aligning Multiple Oblique Flights to a Nadir Reference Flig

[Christian Stallings]

Hi Alexey,

Flight 1 (Reference Flight):
I have a traditional lawnmower pattern flight with high overlap (80/70), flown with RTK, providing high relative accuracy. My goal is to tie and bundle adjust this flight relative to itself, making it the reference for all subsequent flights.

Flight 2 - N (Oblique Flights):
Following the initial nadir flight, I will conduct multiple oblique flights over the same area. These are also RTK flights. Due to the way they are flown, they match and bundle adjust well relative to themselves. However, they tend to lean relative to the projected coordinate system, causing significant changes in pitch. Additionally, because of the overlap patterns, the interior orientation can be inaccurate. This issue can be mitigated by importing the camera calibration from the nadir flight, but it does not correct the incorrect pitch values introduced during the bundle adjustment process.

Problem:
The primary issues are:

The oblique flights tend to lean relative to the projected coordinate system, causing incorrect pitch values.
The interior orientation of the oblique flights can be inaccurate due to their overlap patterns, although this can be partially resolved by importing the nadir flight’s camera calibration.
Desired Workflow:

I am looking for a method that:

Aligns and optimizes the nadir flight, fixing its position.
Aligns the oblique flights to the optimized nadir flight without running the full matching workflow repeatedly between the nadir and each oblique flight.
Balances accurate bundle adjustment across all flights while minimizing processing time.
Ultimately, I plan to script this workflow using the Python module to run it headlessly. I seek guidance on the optimized approach based on these variables.

Thank you in advance for your suggestions.