OpenDroneMap (ODM) is an open-source aerial drone photogrammetry pipeline that converts 2D images into georeferenced 3D models, orthophotos, point clouds, and digital elevation maps. At its core, the OpenDroneMap Processing Engine orchestrates a complete Structure-from-Motion workflow, from feature extraction through dense reconstruction and tiled output generation, purpose-built for transforming drone-captured imagery into geospatial data products.
The toolkit distinguishes itself through GPU-accelerated SIFT feature extraction using CUDA-capable NVIDIA graphics cards, roughly doubling processing speed compared to CPU-only operation. It supports multiple dense reconstruction backends, integrates with OpenSFM for camera pose computation, and offers GeoJSON boundary restriction to limit processing to user-defined polygons. The pipeline generates OGC 3D Tiles for web-based visualization, Cloud-Optimized GeoTIFF orthophotos, and digital surface and terrain models through progressive morphological filtering.
ODM provides a REST API with a task queue for remote job submission and asynchronous result retrieval, alongside configurable feature extraction quality settings that balance memory usage, processing time, and accuracy. It handles video frame extraction with GPS subtitle integration, ground control point georeferencing, and reconstruction alignment to reference files. Additional capabilities include AI-based background removal, automatic reconstruction boundary cropping, and orthophoto generation that skips dense 3D model creation.
