Skip To Content

Capture drone imagery with ArcGIS Flight

ArcGIS Flight is a mobile app that transforms the way drone flights are planned and run for reality mapping and inspection within the ArcGIS system. Drone operators can seamlessly access their GIS content during flight planning, providing valuable context and situational awareness. The app offers different flight modes tailored to specific asset capture needs, whether it's mapping larger areas or inspecting various structures. Flights are fully automated and repeatable, ensuring consistent high-quality imagery. Post-flight, the app enables in-field quality control and integration of imagery into ArcGIS for processing and analysis, including for 3D mesh generation using ArcGIS Reality software.

ArcGIS Flight enables multiple end-to-end drone data collection workflows for the ArcGIS system. You can use ArcGIS reality mapping products such as Site Scan for ArcGIS, ArcGIS Drone2Map, and the ArcGIS Reality for ArcGIS Pro extension to create digital photogrammetry deliverables or capture geospatial video for use in ArcGIS Pro, ArcGIS Video Server, and ArcGIS Excalibur.

To acquire imagery, ArcGIS Flight supports a variety of autonomous mission types such as area survey, crosshatch, or manual inspection. You can fly vertical scans or perimeter scans for mapping tall structures in 3D; corridor scans for traversing linear features such as roads and pipelines; and panorama missions to provide an interactive, top-down view of the site.

During the flight planning stage, you can load existing GIS data (such as feature layers, orthomosaics, or web scenes containing 3D point clouds and meshes) from your ArcGIS Enterprise or ArcGIS Online organization to ArcGIS Flight to provide additional context around the site area.

The app automatically conducts aircraft and camera checks and runs the flight. Long flights are automatically split, allowing you to change the drone's battery and resume where it left off.

After completing your mission, you can transfer images to your mobile device for quality control. ArcGIS Flight includes the following capabilities that help produce higher-quality data, ensure better in-flight safety, and enable new analytical workflows that are not available in other flight planning applications:

  • Terrain following creates consistent overlap across the dataset and ensures that the drone is flying at a safe height above variable terrain.
  • The in-app RTK connection can be used with an RTK drone to enhance the positional accuracy of the drone and captured images.
  • All video flights produce a geospatial video log file that can be loaded into the ArcGIS Pro multiplexer tool for full-motion video analysis.
  • Integration with Airspace Link allows you to see FAA advisories and request LAANC authorization in real time.
  • Quick Map creation can be used to quickly capture and process a set of images to create an up-to-date basemap.

When ArcGIS Flight is paired with Site Scan for ArcGIS, additional functionality is made available.

  • Use of pre and post flight checklist
  • Automated imagery upload for processing
  • Automatic flight logging in Site Scan's fleet management

Explore the following resources to learn more about capturing imagery using Site Scan for ArcGIS.

User manual

Refer to the flight app user manual for an in-depth guide to ArcGIS Flight.

Videos

Review the following Esri-produced videos that clarify and demonstrate concepts, software functionality, and workflows:

Technical support

Documentation for ArcGIS Flight is available from the Esri Support Knowledge Base, including the following:

Esri Community

Use the online imagery community to connect, collaborate, and share experiences:

Related topics