DJI Phantom 4 for 3D mapping

[GregorySukull]

Dear All,

I would like some professional advice on using the Phantom 4 for mapping. I have been using the Phantom 3 Advanced for mapping which gives me a 3D model of the terrain. Is the Phantom 4 much better at capturing 3D imagery of terrain. How much better is the P3A than the P4 for aerial mapping.

Thanks

Greg

[stihl]

The platform (the drone) itself isn't that important. What matters is the camera.

Both the Phantom 3 Advanced and the Phantom 4 use the same(?) camera. Or at least the amount of megapixels (12).
Based on this information alone I would say that there's no difference between the two.

[GregorySukull]

Thanks for the information.What I wanted to know is, if the the sensors on the bottom also help with the terrain modeling. If so how is the quality of the modeling?

[stihl]

I assume the sensors you're mentioning are the sonar and the camera to help it stay in position? These sensors will not have an impact in the images taken. Which, regardless of everything else, need to be crisp photos.

Those sensors will only help to let the drone hoover in it's place which is irrelevant when you're flying an aerial grid over a terrain.

The quality of the models depends on several factors including image quality, flight altitude, environment and overlap. It's hard to say upfront what the quality will be. A model with a RMS error <5 cm in the Z-axis is possible when flown on a low altitude to make sure that the project GSD stays well below 2cm.

[mrb]

I assume the sensors you're mentioning are the sonar and the camera to help it stay in position? These sensors will not have an impact in the images taken. Which, regardless of everything else, need to be crisp photos.

The sensors are actually 2 depth-sensing cameras, as I understand it, used to detect distance to objects (i.e. the ground, rooftop for below, or a tree, for the front-facing ones).

In short, to answer your question - the Phantom 4 works much better for photo-modeling than does, for example, a Phantom 2 with a GoPro or the vision camera (both fisheye lenses). The Phantom 4 camera is "wide" but not fisheye. I've never used a Phantom 3, so I can't speak to that.