Since the previous ISPRS conference in 2004 there have been several developments in modern navigation and earth observation. One of the new developments is accurate production of dense Digital Surface Models (DSMs), three-dimensional (3D) vector maps, and high resolution orthophotos from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with a state-of-the-art navigation and control system for hands-off autonomous flights. The authors have successfully completed several scientific and commercial photogrammetric projects using these UAVs for a variety of applications, like for example modelling archeological sites on the Unesco world heritage list, creating high quality and realistic three-dimensional building models for urban planning, producing three-dimensional cadastral and transportation map updates, reconstructing mountain rock faces, and calculating volumes of stock piles. This paper presents theresults of four particular show case projects: a highway and the Geofort in the Netherlands and two projects in Switzerland: a corn field and the Rand rockslide. The UAV photogrammetric products have been validated with geodetic terrestrial survey data. Typical products are 2-cm seamless orthophotos, three-dimensional vector maps and dense DSMs of approximately 50 points per m2 with a relative point precision of better than 2 cm in XY and 4 cm in height. The paper finally presents the results of the produced DSMs of the projects with high resolution and accuracy.ISSN:1682-1750ISSN:2194-9034ISSN:1682-177
