Application of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in Engineering Practice

Unmanned Aerial System (UAS), also known as ‘drone’, is an aircraft without a human pilot aboard which has found many applications in various sectors of human activity. Drones were shown useful since they can be used for remote investigations in a very simple manner. They can be navigated by the operator from the ground or conduct an investigation by themselves in a programmed flight path. Recently drones have been effectively used for all purposes in practical engineering, giving them an advantage over some traditional methods for data acquisition. The most usual type of data that is collected by the drone are high resolution digital images of a specific object or area. With certain overlapping of these images it is possible in post processing to recreate 3D models of specific areas and objects in the form of point cloud, Digital Terrain Model (DTM), or Digital Surface Model (DSM). By using such data and models, it is possible to generate volumes, areas, cross sections and contour lines in a very short time, which are in most cases the basic information in practical engineering.