A remote-controlled global navigation satellite system based rover for accurate video-assisted cadastral surveys

Abstract

One of the main tasks of a cadastral surveyor is to accurately determine property boundaries by measuring control points and calculating their coordinates. This paper proposes the development of a remotely-controlled tracking system to perform cadastral measurements. A Bluetooth-controlled rover was developed, including a Raspberry Pi Zero W module that acquires position data from a VBOX 3iSR global navigation satellite system (GNSS) receiver, equipped with a specific modem to download real-time kinematic (RTK) corrections from the internet. Besides, the Raspberry board measures the rover speed with a hall sensor mounted on a track, adjusting the acquisition rate to collect data at a fixed distance. Position and inertial data are shared with a cloud platform, enabling their remote monitoring and storing. Besides, the power supply section was designed to power the different components included in the acquisition section, ensuring 2 hours of energy autonomy. Finally, a mobile application was developed to drive the rover and real-time monitor the travelled path. The tests indicated a good agreement between rover measurements and those obtained by a Trimble R10 GNSS receiver (+0.25% mean error) and proved the superiority of the presented system over a traditional metric wheel.