New developments in drone-based automated surface survey: Towards a functional and effective survey system

This paper presents new developments on drone-based automated survey for the detection of individual items or fragments of material culture visible on the ground surface. Since the publication of our original proof of concept, awarded with the Journal of Archaeological Science and Society for Archaeological Sciences Emerging Investigator Award 2019, additional funding has allowed us to implement a series of improvements to the method. These aim to improve detection capabilities and the extraction of items' shapes and increase flight autonomy, control, area covered per flight and the type of environments in which the method can be applied while reducing computing needs, processing time and expertise necessary for its application. This paper provides an account of the methods followed to achieve these objectives, their preliminary results and the current development for their implementation into a free and open-source system that can be used by the archaeological community at large.

Automated summary

This paper presents the latest developments in drone-based automated survey technology in archaeology and how improvements have been made to enhance detection capabilities and implementation into an open-source system for widespread use.