Intelligent Interpretation of the Geometric Properties of Rock Mass Discontinuities Based on an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

The geometric properties of rock mass discontinuities are essential for the evaluation safety masses. Numerous studies have recently been performed on extraction discontinuity information. However, most methods characterized by poor data collection and processing efficiency. This paper presents a UAV-based methodology accurate complete acquisition surface data, as well automatic Moreover, program called Random Sample Consensus (RANSAC) Discontinuity Detection (RDD) is developed to extract information based proposed method. conclusions this research follows. 1) RANSAC can identify feature point set from raw cloud, calculate orientation. 2) boundary be precisely depicted using improved Graham scan algorithm. 3) orientations marked extracted RDD compared with those three-point method in CloudCompare. differences two found less than 3° flat only about 4.87° rough discontinuities, which within reasonable error range practical engineering applications. Therefore, feasibility verified.