Guidelines for an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle-Based Measurement Instrument Design

Although Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are used as mobile measurement platforms in several applications, no guidelines are provided to include the measurement uncertainty assessment in the design steps of the UAV platform. In this article, the steps required for the design of a UAV-based measurement instrument according to the application measurement target and the uncertainty assessment are delineated. In order to highlight the necessity of the proposed design guidelines, the case study of 3D reconstruction of archaeological sites is discussed.