Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) systems as a data acquisition platform and as a measurement instrument are
becoming attractive for many surveying applications in civil engineering. Their performance, however, is not
well understood for these particular tasks. The scope of the presented work is the performance evaluation of a
UAV system that was built to rapidly and autonomously acquire mobile three-dimensional (3D) mapping data.
Details to the components of the UAV system (hardware and control software) are explained. A novel program
for photogrammetric flight planning and its execution for the generation of 3D point clouds from digital mobile
images is explained. A performance model for estimating the position error was developed and tested in several
realistic construction environments. Test results are presented as they relate to large excavation and earth
moving construction sites. The experiences with the developed UAV system are useful to researchers or
practitioners in need for successfully adapting UAV technology for their application(s).