Abstract
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are a new type of platform for laser scanner survey and high-resolution aerial photogrammetry. Despite of growing applications there has been little assessment of their performance. This study aims to assess the accuracy of LiDAR mounted on UAV. Laser scanner survey was carried out in the Ota river. The ground data derived from LiDAR with UAV are compared with RTK-GPS data. It is found that the ground data match well with those by GPS survey in the absence of thick vegetation and that the laser scanner survey allows to acquire data below vegetation crown due to wave form analysis and high density of original data. The effects of pulse rate and pulse angle on the number of ground data were also discussed to recommend the laser scanner survey in the vertical direction at higher pulse rate to measure river bed elevation and riparian vegetation height.
