I appreciate that!

Also an RTK GPS VS a Total Station or Robotic Total Station will be more accurate the farther we travel (depending on the GPS, we sell the Carlson BRx7). Total stations are never perfectly accurate and as you take more and more shots down a long line the accuracy is actually worse on a $60000 robot then a 30K base/rover setup. This is something that old time surveyors refuse to accept, but if the base is level and the RTK was setup and the base point shot over a 180 average (35 for a BRx7) the base will be within a half cm and the rover will likely be almost spot on in relation to the base when the base is switched over to UHF. REGARDLESS OF DISTANCE (within reason) AND AMOUNT OF SHOTS. Compare this to taking 10 shots with a TS, the TS is likely more accurate for the first 4-5 shots, but levels and motor inaccuracy adds up every time you take another shot and eventually you can end up with over a CM difference on a biggish site. I've seen a 5 inch gap before when a guy closed a large site and the surveyor said that it was normal on that site... not if you use base rover. NOTE: I'm only considering new GPS units from reputable brands. The BRx7 is twice as accurate in my testing to a BRX6+ and the 6 is half as accurate as the plus... so you need a good new GPS (2020 or newer).

Yes, lidar might return the tops of vegetation rather than the ground. Some systems can measure multiple returns from each pulse, so you might get a partial reflection from a leaf, another from a branch, another from a bush under the tree, and a last one from the actual ground. In multiple-return systems, you can remove all the returns except the last from each pulse to get the best measurement of "the ground". You might still need to classify some of those final returns as something other than ground to get the best surface. If you have a simpler one-pulse-one-return system, they can have trouble penetrating vegetation. In the previous video (@2:19) he shows that the drone is collecting 1600 points per square foot. (I don't know if it's single- or multi-return.) Some of those might sneak down to the ground, so you could just use the lowest points on the soil pile to get the best measurement.

Hey Rick, thanks for the comment and I totally agree you can definitely find areas that have greater error. In this case the flight was made to capture the detail on the top of these girders so that’s the area that got all the check shots. And even in those you are correct and some of those are greater than quarter inch. But the standard deviation is what our client was interested in to gain an opinion about the overall system accuracy.

@@IndianaDrones I am a licensed amateur drone pilot and I have been wanting to break into the professional field for several years but I just cannot find a way to do so on my nonexistent budget. Do you have any tips on how I might be able to accomplish this that I have missed? TIA

We do that in our reproduction algorithm on rock cloud 👍

🤘🤘🤘

Ha!

Ah yes, that must be it (sarcasm intended)

Hurting the industry? In what way? Do you mean the surveying companies that require three people to go outside and measure a single property, incurring costs of multiple thousand dollars? Alternatively, you could use a drone to measure the same thing, perhaps with a maximum error of 5cm. In the end, for most companies, a 5cm discrepancy is not relevant. If you can cut costs by 50%, every company would be happy. Of course, the total station will probably always have its place in bridges and similar structures.

Okay, check out my channel for more content and proof on the accuracy.

I made a huge mistake

I’m going to make a video tutorial for total station fundamentals

Good thing the sacred mystery of measuring and verifying the monuments in the field exists. You have returned maps to correct surveyors mistakes but also accept the same maps and write a program to "subdivide them" without getting out of your cubicle.... You are the reason every GIS map has a "we assume no liability for the following data" warning at the beginning of it 🤣

@@tep916 -- I might be impressed if that measuring and verifying was repeatable. We get plats with three different as-recorded measurements and one new as-measured. None of them match. Occasionally, they vary by up to five feet across a 100-foot lot. I've see maps where a surveyor plats out some lots, then comes back and replats a couple of them the next year and has different bearings and distances between his own pins. And of course I have to put a disclaimer on my maps... There are over a million documents in the vault dating back almost 200 years. Each has its own errors. Survey errors, transcription errors, copying errors perpetuated through document after document. No surveyor would accept and certify work he didn't do either. Our corner monumentation certificates have a history section. That's always a fun read... Back in the 1920s, a surveyor replaced the original cedar stake with a two-inch iron pipe. The next surveyor finds a one-inch iron pipe The next surveyor finds an old axle shaft. The next surveyor finds a three-quarter-inch rebar. The next surveyor finds the hundred-year-old two-inch iron pipe.

@@bokkenka imagine writing 3 paragraphs that support the need for survey licensure without realizing it. How terrible of a surveyor that had a different measurement a year later...not like the earth ever moves but you knew that. Surveying is so easy and such a joke a smart guy like you should have his license by now. Your position is as funny as the rock robotics guy claiming a higher accuracy than the Hesai Pandar XT32 sensor even claims. And no disrespect to Harrison Knoll as he's a very talented person and owning that he can always learn more and improve so kudos there. My point is none of us are perfect and know everything. Your original comment the guy said "you can't do that" cause you represented a boundary line without doing a field survey and without a license. So you likely broke the law state depending. What you took as entitlement from the surveyor was actually sage advice. All these maps have all these errors yet the program you wrote that uses those maps with errors is perfect and better than his calculations. How asinine.

@@bokkenka I think you're exaggerating the number of "errors" you come across and the issue is more to do with how surveyors come to their measurements. Show me two of these maps that are so grossly inconsistent with one another, and I can probably tell you why they are different - and 99% of the time, it's not incompetency or mistakes made by surveyors. Are there surveyors out there that do a poor job? Of course. Most of them use the same approach to data as GIS, ironically. The idea that math can be used to solve every survey issue is a mistake and many people fall into this trap. That's why there's a difference between survey techs and Licensed Surveyors. There's a lot of nuance involved that cannot be boiled down to simple mathematics.

The funny thing about all these surveyors who always boast about being licensed is that they all run around with crooked rods, unmaintained equipment, irregular standard device maintenance, no temperature compensation, and LITTLE understanding of what is actually important