Geometric Correction of Aerial Camera and LiDAR Hybrid System Data Using GNSS/IMU

This paper aimed to present the geometric correction of a hybrid system data of an airborne which is equipped with Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU), optical camera, and a LiDAR. For a realistic representation of a geographic area by combining optical and LiDAR data, captured with airborne system, we need, first of all, to geometrically correct sensors data, the optical (passive) and the LiDAR (active). Due to the high resolution of the captured images that cover the study area in Maghagha city, Egypt, more than 500 images were used, and each image has more than 400 MBs in size. The need for automatic processing is considered the best way of tackling these large volumes of satellite images. The proposed Automated GCP-based Geometric Correction (AGGC) method provides accurate and rapid processing of these massive amounts of data more than the manual GC method that implements Least-Squares Fitting (LSF) algorithm. For validation, ground truth was used, and data given by GNSS measurement. The experimental results indicate that this proposed method improves the overall accuracy. Our work is not only limited to Maghagha city, but it can also be applied on any new coming satellite images in any part of the world.