A Software Package to Check Aerial Blocks from Gps/imu-assisted Cameras

Verifying the correspondence between planned flight lines and actual ones just after the mission is critical to speed up internal quality controls as well as the external ones performed by the customer. In case of mission planning for very complex areas (mountain or steep sloping areas) it could be useful to simulate the ground coverage of the planned flight to ensure the quality of the final products. Modern aerial digital cameras with on board GPS and IMU recording position and attitude at exposure times allow for an accurate and fast check of the flight parameters. In this context the authors implemented a software for assisted flight mission planning and quality control of the actual flight path, that automatically operates standard photogrammetric checks (overlap, minimum and maximum image scale and attitude angles). The program, named VERIFICA, is written in C++ and integrates the output in a GIS environment. In this paper the major characteristics and capabilities of the tool will be described and an application case study will be presented with the quality control of a complex photogrammetric survey in a large mountainous area in southern Italy.