Kinematic Positioning: From Mobile Mapping Systems to Unmanned Aerial Vehicles at Pisa University Gabriella Caroti and Andrea Piemonte Abstract Since the 1990s, with the availability of satellite positioning techniques, enabling to determine three-dimensional point coordinates in a global reference system with topographic accuracy, several applications dedicated to mapping of the territory by means of mobile geo-referenced sensors have steadily been developed. This paper discusses the experiences gained in this field at the University of Pisa— Laboratory of Topography over more than twenty years of experimental work. These activities, often conducted in cooperation with the University of Trieste and in particular with Professor Giorgio Manzoni, have always featured a multidisci- plinary approach. Different types of sensors have been installed, at first in land-based vehicles and currently on unmanned aerial systems: GPSs, GNSSs and INSs, carbon monoxide and particulate matter measuring systems, single- and multiple-axis laser scanners, industrial and photography cameras. Use of these sensors, besides drafting and testing maps of the territory in several areas (car- tography, road cadastre, pollution monitoring, city modelling …), allowed to keep track of the development of instrumentation and methods of kinematic positioning. Keywords MMS Á UAV Á Kinematic positioning 1 Introduction Satellite location systems, able to provide absolute positioning of any point in near-real time, have prompted development of several applications ever upon their availability in the 1990s. G. Caroti (&) Á A. Piemonte (&) Civil and Industrial Engineering Department, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy e-mail: gabriella.caroti@unipi.it A. Piemonte e-mail: andrea.piemonte@unipi.it © Springer International Publishing AG 2018 R. Cefalo et al. (eds.), New Advanced GNSS and 3D Spatial Techniques, Lecture Notes in Geoinformation and Cartography, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-56218-6_21 261 gabriella.caroti@unipi.it