About drone attitude tags

Hi!

I have a very basic question. I have started PPK processing DJI images (Mavic 3M and Zenmuse L2) using Emlid Studio. I have found this necessary as the NTRIP connection to my CORS service is often bad in our study area. This leads to Single RTK solutions. Using Emlid Studio works great and the quality of the JPG position tags are greatly improved. However, I was wondering if anyone can confirm whether or not Emlid Studio also updates the drone attitude. If the RTK position was horrible, the initial JPG tag heading might be very wrong (I imagine) so I am hoping that these are also updated through the PPK processing.

Anyone have any knowledge of this?

1 Like

Yes, the corrections will update X, Y and Z.

I believe he is asking about the aircraft and gimbal pitch, yaw and roll values rather than location. I do not believe those values are adjusted in ES. Those values will however be used by the SFM processor to better establish the camera pose.

1 Like

Yes your are correct, I am asking about the pitch, yaw and roll values, not the X, Y and Z.

So if I’m understanding you right, these values are not updated by ES in the EXIF data of the JPG files, but there is hope that a photogrammetry software such as Pix4D will be able to estimate acceptable values of the yaw value based on the change in position over time? This makes sense when I think of it, assuming I allow Pix4D to optimize the yaw values when processing. However, as always, not having GCPs leaves us quite vunerable if ay error occurs…

Thank you for the clarification.

Hi @broald,

If you are using a DJI drone, we keep the orientation parameters(yaw, pitch, and roll) from the EXIF. Only the latitude, longitude, altitude, and it’s corresponding position accuracy are replaced with the results you got from the post-processing in Emlid Studio.

PIX4D should recognize all these parameters from your image EXIF so you can accurately align the photos to create a model.

Metashape uses the parameters based on their camera database

Yaw, pitch, and roll values come from the drone’s internal sensors and aren’t touched during PPK processing in Emlid Studio. PPK will clean up your geotags, but the attitude data stays as-is. Thankfully, for photogrammetry, small attitude errors usually aren’t a big deal since software like Metashape or Pix4D can adjust for them during the alignment process. It’s a different story with LiDAR or videogrammetry, where continuous data capture means those attitude values really matter. But for your DJI images, as long as the geotags are solid, you’re in good shape.

1 Like