9.4 Aerial-Ground Fusion Processing

What This Mode Produces

Aerial-Ground Map Fusion merges a ground scan with drone aerial imagery into one model that covers interior and ground-level geometry, the roof, and the surrounding site. The ground scan supplies precise interior detail. The drone supplies the roof and the areas no handheld scanner can reach. Use it for campus facilities, construction sites, and heritage or landmark documentation where roof and aerial context are required. Skip it for interior-only work, at any scale.

Plan the Site and the Flight

The ground scan and the drone flight are joined by shared points on the ground called aerial-ground fusion points. Placing them well is the entire job. Plan them before anyone powers on a device.

• Survey the site first. Use satellite imagery or an aerial photo to lay out the site before you arrive.
• Choose 4 to 5 fusion points. Pick open, unobstructed areas spread evenly across the site to serve as the drone's takeoff and landing points. These same spots become the fusion points that tie air to ground. Points clustered at one end of a large site do not constrain the far end, and the model will drift there.
• Confirm each point is visible from both air and ground. The drone and the scanner must both be able to see the same fixed targets at each point, since that shared view is what the bridge photos will capture.

Capture the Ground Scan

Scan the site as usual, with two additions that create the fusion points.

1. Mark a fusion point at each takeoff and landing location. At each of the 4 to 5 chosen spots, mark an aerial-ground fusion point and circle it once so the scanner captures a complete cloud around it. LCC Studio identifies these points automatically during processing, so they do not need names.
2. Route the scan path through every fusion point. Plan the walking path so it passes through each point, and close two loops within 6.5 ft of each point. The double loop closure at the point is what gives the fusion a reliable tie.
3. Cover the rest of the site normally. Follow standard scan technique for the interior and ground-level exterior between the fusion points.

Fly the Drone Mission

The mission is the overhead mapping flight. The goal is complete, high-overlap coverage of every surface you want in the model.

The core principle is overlap: every ground object of interest needs more than 85% overlap across the image set. Higher overlap produces a more complete reconstruction.

Capture the Vertical Bridge Photos

The vertical bridge is the step that decides whether the ground scan and the drone mission actually merge. The mission photographs the site from above; the ground scan captures it from eye level; on their own, the software has no way to connect the two. The bridge fills that gap. At each marked point, the drone climbs a vertical column, photographing the same scene continuously from the scanner's height all the way up to the mission's flight height. That unbroken run of images is what lets the fusion lock the two datasets together.

Capture a bridge column at every marked takeoff and landing point:

1. Start low, at the scanner's viewpoint. Position the drone over the marked spot at roughly the height the scanner collected, about 5 ft off the ground, and aim the camera at fixed targets visible to both the drone and the scanner.
2. Climb straight up to flight height, shooting as you go. Rise in even steps from the scanner's ground height to the mission's flight height, taking 30 to 40 photos across the full climb and holding at least 85% overlap between one shot and the next. The lowest photo matches the scanner's ground height; the highest matches flight height.
3. Fly the column from 3 directions. Repeat the climb aimed from the left, the center, and the right of the targets, so each of the 3 directions is its own 30-to-40-photo set at 85% overlap.

Details that matter on the bridge:

• How high to rise between shots. Space the 30 to 40 photos evenly across the climb so consecutive shots overlap by at least 85%. On a tall column this is a small step: for a climb from about 5 ft to 250 ft, a photo roughly every 6 to 8 ft; on a lower flight the step is shorter.
• How many photos per point. About 30 to 40 per direction, across 3 directions, so roughly 90 to 120 photos at each takeoff and landing point. Budget the flight time and the battery for that.
• Do not mark or name control points for the bridge photos. These are imagery, not survey points. You do not add a control point or a name for them. Just fly the column and shoot.
• Keep the bridge photos with the mission photos. Every bridge photo goes into the same folder as the drone mission photos. There is no separate upload for them, on any scanner. See Section 7.

Aerial Data Requirements

Before processing begins, LCC Studio rejects an aerial image set that does not meet these. The set is the mission photos and the bridge photos together, in one folder.

Run the Fusion

Processing takes exactly two inputs, the same on every scanner: the scanner project file, and one folder holding all of the drone photos, mission and bridge together.

1. Organize the two inputs first. Keep the scanner project file in one place, and put every drone photo, mission and bridge, into a single image folder. Do not sort the bridge photos into separate subfolders.
2. Create the project. Click Create and select Aerial-Ground Map Fusion. This mode is distinct from Map Fusion and Single Model and cannot be switched later without reprocessing.
3. Add the ground data. Under Ground Data, add the scanner project file. LCC reads the fusion point markers from the scan and identifies them automatically. The interface shows the device type it detects.
4. Add the aerial data. Under Aerial Data, select the single folder that holds all of the drone photos. This one folder is the entire aerial input.
5. Set parameters and start. Quality Standard for a first run. Maximum Gaussian Points applies per block in this mode and the system auto-adjusts it. Start the reconstruction.

Check the fusion at the ground-to-air transition

When processing finishes, open the model and check the one place a bad fusion shows up: where the ground data meets the aerial data. Find a wall or a tall feature that both the scanner and the drone captured, then follow it from the ground, which came from the scanner, up to the roofline, which came from the drone. It should read as one continuous surface.

A bad fusion at that spot looks like a horizontal step, a sideways offset, a doubled or ghosted wall, or a visible break at the height where the two datasets meet. Any of those means the bridge column at that point did not give the fusion enough overlap between ground and air. That point needs its bridge re-flown; the break cannot be fixed in post.

Processing requirements