A Methodology to Replicate Cutting-Edge Surveying Equipment Using Cost-Sensitive Devices to Promote Innovative Mapping Solutions in Undergraduate Engineering

Engineering applications typically use mapping products as input for developing solutions.Several levels of data acquisition can support engineering projects, such as orbital, aerial, and terrestrial data gathering.Considering the terrestrial level, the way to acquire data can be static, where the equipment is at a fixed position during the measurements, or kinematic (mobile), in which a platform carries the equipment during data acquisition-in movement.Terrestrial mobile mapping systems (TMMS) usually have sensors assembled in a vehicle that collect data while moving, and nowadays, these systems can cost around one million dollars.That said, it is notorious that only a few commercial applications rely on this mapping strategy.Regarding educational purposes, these commercial TMMS are introduced to students with point cloud data provided by mapping companies.However, these commercial TMMS are cost-prohibitive for most universities, preventing students from fully exploring this technology in terms of configuration, data collection, data processing, and product generation.Based on this, this project presents a service-oriented project-based learning approach to bring the sense of using TMMS to the university with low-cost devices.The proposed strategy contemplates developing a cost-sensitive terrestrial mobile mapping system (CS-TMMS) to support a PBL (project-based learning) service-oriented project.The instructor integrated the CS-TMMS development into undergraduate research and courses to explore the potential of a CS-TMMS for cadastral applications related to power distribution and vegetation management, parcel-based solutions, and transportation.Students were involved in software development, data acquisition, and data manipulation.Students defined possible applications based on features extracted from images collected by the CS-TMMS.After image acquisition, vehicle trajectories were established using Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) and used as input for the mapping stage, followed by cartographic product generation using Geographic Information Systems (GIS).Based on the results, it was possible to create geodatabases with information regarding the location of different features and their characteristics, such as poles, traffic signs, residency, trees, and others.The products generated highlight the approach's feasibility for educational and technical purposes.