ROCK SLOPE STABILITY ANALYSES USING STRUCTURE-FROM-MOTION SOFTWARE AND UNMANNED AERIAL VEHICLES

Faculty and students at Radford University are testing the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and structure-from-motion (SFM) software, for extracting geologic structure data and plotting stereonets derived from high resolution video imagery. This is an update describing an ongoing research program. Among the topics covered are various types of readily available UAV platforms, advances in software useful for processing high resolution video imagery, and procedures specific to analyzing the safety and stability of natural rock slopes or manmade excavations in rock. Rotary wing UAVs provide the ability to hover and image steep rock slopes. Several test cases will be presented. Current research suggests that digital 3D models created in this way will allow for detailed slope inspection and the aquisition of data, including rock mass ratings, rock quantities, and discontinuity orientations for kinematic stereonet analyses in situations where stability is controlled by geologic structure.