Recreación virtual 3D de vuelos de Drones con Cesium.js y Oculus Rift

Abstract

Nowadays, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), known as drones, are tools whose use is increasing in the field of earth's surface images capture. Their applications range from precision agriculture, infrastructures monitoring to geological studies, resulting in an inexpensive alternative to the manned aerial vehicles traditionally used in photogrammetry. UAV systems can be equipped with different instruments: optical cameras, multispectral or infrared ones, that in combination with satellite localization tools with accuracy in the order of centimetres, allow to obtain different products from a single flight, products like: georeferenced mosaics, digital elevation models (DEM), outlines, 3D textures, point clouds, etc. This work describes the representation of drone's flights in web browsers using 3D globes visualization technology Cesium.js and virtual reality headset Oculus Rift. Starting from data collected in different flight campaigns, the interactive visualization is performed using telemetry data, digital elevation models, georeferenced images and mosaics. These data are processed by open source software (GDAL) and loaded and served by a geographic data server (GeoServer) through OGC web services (WMS, WFS). This representation allow users to virtually experience the flight and to visualize in an interactive way the images and the flight data captured by the onboard instruments, taking advantage of the immersive visual interface offered by Oculus Rift and the orientation of the point of view through its integrated sensors