Implementation of ultra-light UAV systems for cultural heritage documentation

New technologies, such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and terrestrial laser scanning systems, provide opportunities for the digital documentation of cultural heritage. Although ultra-light drones (ULDs) are usually used for recreational activities, in this study, we examined their ability for use in digital documentation. We investigated the efficiency of an ULD for documentation of a selected historical building. In this study, the structure from motion (SfM) method was used to create three-dimensional point cloud data of a historical building using ULD and a low-cost UAV. The resulting point clouds were compared with terrestrial laser scanner data. The maximum standard deviations were calculated as 0.62 cm and 1.87 cm for low-cost UAV and ULD, respectively. The results show that ULDs can be used under suitable circumstances as a low-cost alternative for cultural heritage documentation.