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Unmanned airborne systems (UAS) based remote sensing offers flexible tool for environmental monitoring. Novel lightweight Fabry-Perot interferometer (FPI) based, frame format, hyperspectral imaging in the spectral range from 400 to 1600 nm was used for identifying different species of trees in a forest area. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this was the first research where stereoscopic, hyperspectral VIS, NIR, SWIR data is collected for tree species identification using UAS. The first results of the analysis based on fusion of two FPI-based hyperspectral imagers and RGB camera showed that the novel FPI hyperspectral technology provided accurate geometric, radiometric and spectral information in a forested scene and is operational for environmental remote sensing applications.

Many valuable archaeological artefacts have the size of a few centimetres or less. The production of relevant documentation of such artefacts is mainly limited to subjective interpretation and manual drawing techniques using a magnifier. Most of the laser scanners available for the archaeological purposes cannot reach sufficient space resolution to gather all relevant features of the artefact, such as the shape, the relief, the texture and any damage present. Digital photogrammetric techniques make measuring with high accuracy possible and such techniques can be used to produce the relevant archaeometric documentation with a high level of detail. The approaches for shooting a good macro photograph (in the photogrammetric sense) will be explored and discussed as well as the design of a calibration test-field and the self-calibration methods suitable for macro photogrammetry. Finally, the method will be tested by producing a photorealistic 3D-model of an ancient figurine.

The spectral characteristic of the visible light reflected from any of archaeological artefact is the result of the interaction of its surface illuminated by incident light. Every particular surface depends on what material it is made of and/or which layers put on it has its spectral signature. Recent archaeometry recognises this information as very valuable data to extend present documentation of artefacts and as a new source for scientific exploration. However, the problem is having an appropriate hyperspectral imaging system available and adopted for applications in archaeology. In this paper, we present the new construction of the hyperspectral imaging system, made of industrial hyperspectral line scanner ImSpector V9 and CCD-sensor PixelView. The hyperspectral line scanner is calibrated geometrically, and hyperspectral data are geocoded and converted to the hyperspectral cube. The system abilities are evaluated for various archaeological artefacts made of different materials. Our experience in applications, visualisations, and interpretations of collected hyperspectral data are explored and presented.

The development of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and continuous price reduction of unmanned systems attracted us to this research. Professional measuring systems are dozens of times more expensive and often heavier than "amateur", non-metric UAVs. For this reason, we tested the DJI Phantom 2 Vision Plus UAV. Phantom’s smaller mass and velocity can develop less kinetic energy in relation to the professional measurement platforms, which makes it potentially less dangerous for use in populated areas. In this research, we wanted to investigate the ability of such non-metric UAV and find the procedures under which this kind of UAV may be used for the photogrammetric survey. It is important to emphasize that UAV is equipped with an ultra wide-angle camera with 14MP sensor. Calibration of such cameras is a complex process. In the research, a new two-step process is presented and developed, and the results are compared with standard one-step camera calibration procedure. Two-step process involves initially removed distortion on all images, and then uses these images in the phototriangulation with self-calibration. The paper presents statistical indicators which proved that the proposed two-step process is better and more accurate procedure for calibrating those types of cameras than standard one-step calibration. Also, we suggest two-step calibration process as the standard for ultra-wideangle cameras for unmanned aircraft.