We would like to use Site Scan at our mining operations however Site Scan Flight currently only supports terrain following using the free ESRI elevation service. The ability to reference client or custom elevation data has become a minimum standard for flight planning applications, is supported by several competitor products and is limiting our adoption of Site Scan.
The ESRI elevation service is of varying quality, and in any case out of control of the pilot, so I would be cautious when using for any flight planning. It is good for context if you have nothing else available, but this wouldn't be accepted in a RPAS safety case.
At mining operations terrain is constantly changing so we need to reference an up to date elevation service. Maintaining a constant flying height AGL is critical for safe operation as well as photo scale/overlap and reducing ground control. Typical nadir terrain following operations are conducted at 100-120m AGL. High resolution and oblique terrain following missions are conducted at 50m AGL or lower. Operating from a mine lookout the remote pilot is often above the drone and so visually ensuring ground clearance whilst the drone is in flight can be challenging. The ability to flight plan based on accurate elevation data that has been quality assured by the client is essential.
Site Scan should be configurable to reference an ESRI elevation service from enterprise ArcGIS or AGOL. We can then configure this to be a bare earth DEM or DSM if there are above ground obstructions we wish to plan around.
