Unleash the power of point clouds to measure volumes of stockpiles and roundwood.  Traditional stockpiles are measured using ground survey techniques to establish spot elevations scattered across the surface of the pile.  Obtaining ground spot elevations is time consuming and requires personnel to traverse piles which raises safety concerns.  By using image based point clouds, unprecedented volume accuracy can be obtained by using spot elevations spaced from 1 to 50 cm across the surface of the pile. Using imagery captured using conventional aircraft or UAVs/drones, structure from motion (SFM) techniques provide detailed surface models from which we generate volume measurements.

The following image shows a gravel pile that was photographed as part of a large target area using a manned fixed wing aircraft.  The resultant point cloud had an average point spacing of 16 cm and a total of 14,311 points were extracted from the stockpile which were used to calculate the pile volume. 

Volume calculations from point clouds are suitable for all types of stockpiles including asphalt, gravel, sand, wood chips, biomass, hog fuel and roundwood.