Finding ways to streamline productivity is never far from a manager’s mind, and MAVinci’s latest offering to the Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) market has removed a big part of the work from aerial surveying.
The Sirius Pro UAV offers the same 5cm accuracy as a Sirius Classic, but with one crucial difference: There’s no need for ground control points (GCPs).
With most types of UAV, ground control points have been required for modelling and surveying applications.
However, this revolutionary new system altogether removes the need to set up ground control points to guide the vehicle.
This saves a huge amount of time involved in setting up a survey, which reduces costs and increases efficiency.
It also does away with the need to get into areas that are difficult to access, hazardous, or too large to be aerially surveyed with ease.
MAVinci’s Australasian distributor, Position Partners UAS product manager Gavin Docherty said that setting out ground control can often take more than 50 per cent of the total project time for an aerial survey.
“By removing this step in the process, the Sirius Pro delivers the same accuracy and reliability of data with ultimate convenience for the user,” he said.
The Sirius Pro features Topcon Positioning System’s high precision GNSS technology, with an on-board Topcon 100Hz dual frequency geodetic GNSS receiver to deliver RTK accuracy.
The MAVinci Connector then works as an RTK base station, which transmits corrections to the GNSS receiver on-board, enabling high precision surveying in real-time.
The Sirius Pro UAV essentially puts ground points in the air, eliminating the need for manual set-out on the ground.
This technology could prove a game changer for any surveyor wanting to undertake large-scale mapping and topographical surveys and is especially useful for mining applications.
Mine surveyors face the challenge of conducting surveys, reconciliation and geological work in active mining areas with working heavy machinery. This often requires the surveyor to get approval to shut down plant on site for ground control set-out, adding lengthy delays to a survey.
Sirius Pro customer and director of UAS surveying firm Airmap3D Matt Ewing has experienced the benefits of removing ground control points from the equation.
“Organising the logistics to get out and set out the ground control points was a long process that would add up to a whole day to each job,” he said.
“But now I can deliver a job to a mine site, from start to finish including data processing, in half a day with the same if not better accuracy than the Classic model.”