Ahead of this year’s INTERGEO in Stuttgart, in September, Aibotix presented a new solution for high-precision surveying with Version 2 of its tried and tested hexacopter AibotX6: High Precision GNSS. After the successful conclusion of collaboration between the R&D departments of HEXAGON and Aibotix, which has been part of HEXAGON since its acquisition by Leica Geosystems, the INTERGEO 2015 exhibition provided the backdrop for the presentation of High Precision GNSS for the surveying hexacopter AibotX6. The upcoming release of the system, which can also be installed in existing AibotX6 hexacopters as Version 2, was first announced at this year’s HxGN Live in Las Vegas and will now be available as a serial product following the completion of all field trials. This makes Aibotix the first company to offer a serial-production solution for high-precision GNSS for surveying UAVs.

Only the close collaboration of several development teams made it possible to adapt the new technology so rapidly and develop it further for use in a surveying hexacopter. The precision and quality of the surveying data can be significantly improved by using RTK technology on the basis of the SmartNet (Leica Geosystems) correction data service. Post-processing is also a possible alternative. This new flexibility not only saves users a lot of time, but also offers them more scope for adapting their activities to a specific operational situation.

From the word go, great care was taken to ensure that the system could be superimposed on proven existing solutions. Besides allowing the use of existing surveying hexacopters, this meant above all the continuing generation and processing of data with the fully integrated software Aibotix AiProFlight. Only an update is required to enable the software to be used in conjunction with the new HP GNSS for the AibotX6, although the significant time reduction in comparison with conventional UAV surveying represents the greatest benefit for customers.