Thank you for answering my questions kozuch, now i think that good surveying equipment can be created with this hardware and without getting the skyrockets prices.
the type of jobs to be made with the drone can be classified in 3 different types:
-
The hardest one to make, with this equipment is placing new marks (millimetric accuracy required) or stakes of a property, this requires to load the marks on your GNSS equipment. this marks are taken from the property tile, some times the tile have the utm coordinates in the other case we use some CAD software to get them.
-
Just collecting data on the field where ever is needed, like property marks, already settled down or just different places to get slope contours of the property. it can be post processed later and no problem with this one.
-
And the easiest one the photogrammetric surveying where the hardest part its processing the pictures with pc software and get measurement or 3D contour lines. here the millimeters are not needed.
the first one is the challenging to get, and it wont work in some areas, with vegetation, but there are many that will work on, like desert, beach or new construction areas where the machinery cleaned all vegetation out.
the way i think it can be possibly made with this centimetric accuracy is to land the drone in the mark and then wait a while to collect some raw data, get the data via GSM in your PC and process it to make it millimetric and make the corrections and get the distance an angle needed from the center of the drone, since the real mark should be a few centimeters around, something like an arm to control a small hose around to the desired spot and make a mark.
for the mark i think that something like polyurethane foam should be used, because the light weight, and it will stick to most surfaces, in the beach sand could be a problem for this method.
i dont know much of design but this drone will need to have 1 foot or more, of ground clearance to have a good camera view and for making the marks with some movable arm around the ground for the sprayer.
number 2 and 3 looks that they can be done without problem. where ever you can land it you can get raw data for that spot, and the photogrammetric you can configure the drone to take the picture at the desired coordinates and altitude and make some reference mark in the ground and you are ready to go. this photogrametric tool looks very interesting, since you can cover big areas or hard to get, at very low cost, compared to the cost that survey companies will charge for this.
something else that can be used in this area, is the LIDAR sensor to make easier calculations or measurement, but again I don´t know much of the combinations that can be made with this feature and the programming it