iPolFLY

Automated documentation service for the integrated police system iPolSYS

Aims

Precise mapping plays an important role when documenting critical events such as car accidents or crime scenes. In contrast to terrestrial mapping a UAV allows taking images from above the event, thus yielding bird’s eye views of the scenario at photogrammetric accuracies. The proposed work is based on ground control markers, i.e. metal plates with custom designed optical markers, which are positioned at the critical location and measured highly accurate with GPS equipment by the police.

Brief Description

The existing desktop program system iPolSYS (integrated police system) provides the processing and graphical presentation of situations by means of geodetic and photogrammetric methods. It supports the investigator in terms of data input, process, analysis and documentation of traffic accidents and matters of fact. The system was enhanced by the mobile application iPolSYS mobile, which covers the digital data logging afield. Therefore, a GNSS module (RTK and post-processing) is applied as well as a mobile app for first evaluation on-site. The app is operated on a tablet-PC and provides several functionalities inter alia the image restitution which is essential for the analysis of photographic records.

For documentary records of objects on the earth’s surface especially in terms of the image restitution the pick-up height plays an important role. The ideal cases are vertical photos where the picture axis meets the surface of the object as much vertical as possible.

Photos by air vehicles could achieve this goal. Besides aircrafts and helicopters, the usage of unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) is feasible, especially in terms of photographs of accidents or crime scenes concerning flight altitudes below 120 meters.

The project iPolFLY aimed for the development of a drone, which is specialised for photogrammetric image flights combining a recent software for the controlling with the automatic recording of the array of control-points for the image restitution. Therefore, high precision GNSS tools are necessary.

In addition to the compliance of photogrammetric conditions, especially a preferably simple handling and the achievement of high level on safety (collision and crash safety) are emphasised during the development of iPolFLY.

The recorded aerial photos are the basis for the analysis and documentation methods of iPolSYS and iPolSYS mobile respectively they complement them. The combination of photogrammetric records by iPolFLY, the control-point measurement and image restitution by iPolSYS mobile and the analysis and illustration by iPolSYS can provide metric and also geo-referenced documentations of accident situations or crime scenes of high quality.