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What do I need? in order to do 3d images of Microwave / cell towers.

brendancullen

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So I want to do 3d digital twins of towers. I can't seem to find info as to what model drone to use or how to program circular tower inspections that would do the entire tower top-bottom automatically. Any suggestions?
I have an Autel lite enterprise but am willing to purchase DJI is that is what I need.
 
there are many products out there I would say search Youtube and the like.
 
To do inspections from the model you will need to be very close. Sub 1 cm GSD.

There are several ways to do this, but I highly recommend the following.

1. Agisoft Metashape. Fly the tower to obtain a low resolution model. Then use Agisoft Flight Planner to create a mission. You can set the mission to be whatever distance you need. You can achieve ultra low GSD. You will need RTK to do this as you need cm precise positioning. You then import this mission as a waypoint mission into DJI Pilot 2.

2. Matrice 4 E Local Point Cloud. You fly a mission to obtain a low resolution point cloud and then have Pilot 2 create a mission that flies close to the tower. It is similar to above but is completed entirely in Pilot 2.

You could use orbits and facade missions, but the above two are very, very good. If there are a lot of obstacles such as trees and wires the above can handle them to a point. You just have to make sure they are captured in the initial low resolution models so the flight planners can see them and adjust your flights accordingly.

It is extremely nerve wracking to watch a Matrice 4 E fly within 10 feet of every part of a building, missing antennas, trees and the like, hoping and praying that RTK positioning really works, LOL.
 
One thing to add. While you can inspect items like this from the 3D model, it works best when you use software that allows you to click on any part of the model and then be able to view the images taken of that area and add annotations and such. There are different solutions that allow this.
 

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