Get started with drone imagery in ArcGIS

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12-06-2018 03:04 PM
EmilyWindahl
Esri Contributor
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Given the growing number of people using commercial drones these days, a common question is: “What do I do with all this imagery?”

The simple answer is that it depends on what you’re trying to accomplish.

If you just want to share the imagery as-is, and aren’t worried about making sure it’s georeferenced to be an accurate depiction of the ground, Oriented Imagery is probably your answer. If you’re capturing video, Full Motion Video in the Image Analyst extension for ArcGIS Pro is your best bet. Ultimately, though, many users plan to turn the single frame images acquired by drones into authoritative mapping products—orthorectified mosaics, digital surface models (DSMs), digital terrain models (DTMs), 3D point clouds, or 3D textured meshes.

Esri has three possible solutions for producing authoritative mapping products from drone imagery, each targeted for different users— (1) Drone2Map for ArcGIS, (2) the ortho mapping capability of ArcGIS Pro Advanced, and (3) the Ortho Maker app included with ArcGIS Enterprise. Read on to get an overview of all three solutions, and to figure out which one is best for your application.

Drone2Map for ArcGIS

For individual GIS users, Drone2Map is an easy-to-use, standalone app that supports a complete drone-processing workflow.

Drone2Map includes guided templates for creating orthorectified mosaics and digital elevation models. It’s also the only ArcGIS product that creates 3D products from drone imagery, including RGB point clouds and 3D textured meshes. Once you’ve processed your imagery, it’s easy to share the final products—2D web maps and 3D web scenes can be easily published on ArcGIS Online with a single step. ArcGIS Desktop isn’t required to run Drone2Map, but products created with Drone2Map are Desktop-compatible. That’s important, because it gives you the option to use ArcGIS Pro as an image management solution, or to serve your imagery products as dynamic image services using ArcGIS Image Server.

Ortho mapping capability of ArcGIS Pro Advanced

For GIS professionals, the ortho mapping capability of ArcGIS Pro Advanced enables you to create orthomosaics and digital elevation models from drone images (as well as from modern aerial imagery, historical film, and satellite data) in the familiar ArcGIS Desktop environment.

There are added benefits to processing your drone imagery in ArcGIS Pro. For users with very large imagery collections, Pro’s image management capabilities are especially valuable. Managing drone imagery using mosaic datasets makes it easy to query images and metadata, mosaic your imagery, and build footprints. Image management and processing workflows in ArcGIS Pro can also be automated using Python or Model Builder. Finally, sharing your imagery is straightforward. While you can publish your products to ArcGIS Online, you can also use ArcGIS Pro in conjunction with ArcGIS Image Server to publish drone products as dynamic image services.  

Ortho Maker app in ArcGIS Enterprise 10.6.1+

For ArcGIS Enterprise users, the Ortho Maker app offers a solution for organizations with multiple users who want simple, web-based workflows to create orthomosaics and DEMs from drone imagery.

 

Ortho Maker provides an easy-to-use web interface for uploading drone imagery and managing the ortho mapping workflow, while behind the scenes it uses the distributed processing and storage capability of Enterprise and ArcGIS Image Server to quickly process even very large collections of drone imagery. (That also means it requires ArcGIS Image Server configured for raster analysis.) The ArcGIS API for Python can be used to automate the ortho mapping process. Sharing Ortho Maker products is virtually automatic—they become imagery layer items accessible in your Enterprise portal, easily shared with users throughout your organization.

What do typical users say?

things typical users of each ArcGIS option for processing imagery might say

Next steps

Now that you have a better idea which solution makes sense for your application, it’s time to take one for a test drive. Drone2Map offers a free 15-day trial, plus a hands-on Learn lesson to get started. You can try ArcGIS Pro Advanced free for 21 days, and read more about getting started with ortho mapping for drone imagery.  For users with Enterprise 10.6.1+ and raster analysis enabled, Ortho Maker is included—find out how to get started.  Other Enterprise users should contact their administrator to see about getting access. If you still have questions, contact Esri for more product information.

7 Comments
JeffreySwain
Esri Regular Contributor

Well done explanation.  Thanks a bunch!

MarkGage
New Contributor

Thank you Emily, you pointed me in the right direction.

arahman_mdmajid
Occasional Contributor

Thank you for the complete overview of the products. 

@EmilyWindahl I have a few queries,

Q1. Do we need to use our drone to capture data and then orthorectify it, or can we acquire raw drone imagery and perform the rectification process?

Q2. The types of data you mentioned in your post. do these file types come by default while acquiring the drone imagery or do we have to order them specifically?

It will be beneficial if you can also share the essential workflow from acquiring the imagery to publishing it as an imagery service in the ArcGIS enterprise.

 

CodyBenkelman
Esri Regular Contributor

Arahman

Can you please rephrase your questions?  Q1 is not clear - you can acquire drone data with your own drone or others can provide the raw drone data to you.  If you're using Drone2Map, you can do the rectification (orthorectification) on your own computer.  Note we also offer a cloud processing service called SIte Scan that was not reflected in this blog from 3 years ago.

In Question 2, all of the required data is captured by the drone except for some configuration data (based on the drone camera) which is built into Drone2Map, Site Scan, or Ortho Mapping for nearly all common drones.  If you are concerned about other data, please let us know specifically which type of data you are questioning.  

As for the last question, the "essential workflow" is relatively simple.  If you mean the *minimum* workflow, single images captured by any modern drone can be orthorectified by Drone2Map, Site Scan, or Ortho Mapping .  Once processing is complete, if you have ArcGIS Enterprise with Image Server, you can publish the results directly from any drone processing software from Esri. 

If by "essential" you mean the *recommended* workflow, we would also recommend you use the Site Scan Flight software to plan and control your drone flight.  It's built into Site Scan for ArcGIS but if you're using Drone2Map or Ortho Mapping, you can get a free copy of Site Scan Flight at http://esriurl.com/SSLE

This is a more recent web page https://www.esri.com/en-us/arcgis/drone-mapping that will lead you to more information.

If this does not answer your questions, please let us know.

Cody B.  

 

arahman_mdmajid
Occasional Contributor

Cody

Thank you for the detailed explanation. 

Yes, by essential, I was referring to the recommended best practices.

I have got the answers to the questions I was looking for. If I have any other queries, I'll let you know.

Cheers,

Abdur Rahman

 

 

GIS_Hotz
New Contributor

In a previous job I was given a series of images captured by one of our DJI drones.  I could see the images in Windows 10, but when I tried to import them into ArcGIS Pro and ArcMap they were rejected, and I received error messages.  I turned out that the camera on the drone that captured the images was simply incompatible with ArcGIS Pro and ArcMap.

To avoid this expensive mistake in the future, is there a list at ESRI of compatible drone cameras that one should use in ArcGIS Pro, ArcMap, and eventually Drone2Map?

Thank you.

SuziShoemaker
New Contributor II
Have you considered using Oriented Imagery tools to import and utilize
those images? We've developed a wizard that lets you quickly create
oriented imagery catalogs using DGI Drone data.
About the Author
Emily is a product manager on the Imagery Team, helping create tools and best practices for working with imagery and rasters in ArcGIS.