Remotely piloted aircraft-based automated vertical surface survey.

Remotely Piloted Aircrafts (RPAs) are commonly used as a platform for collecting images which can be processed with Structure from Motion-Multi View Stereo (SfM-MVS) to generate 3D models. However, mobile applications for mapping planning are not designed for image acquisition of vertical surfaces, such as quarry walls or large cliffs, leaving the user to a manual flight operation, which does not ensure optimal overlap between images. Here we describe a workflow, based on the Litchi App, for automated RPA missions designed to acquire images of vertical surfaces or structures.