Article
Geography, Physical
Kathrin Maier, Andrea Nascetti, Ward van Pelt, Gunhild Rosqvist
Summary: This study proposes a novel method to determine the spatial distribution of snow depth in challenging alpine terrains using a combination of a multispectral camera and a UAV. The method enables fast, reliable, and affordable measurement of high-resolution 3D snow-covered surface models. The experiments suggest that the red components in the electromagnetic spectrum are crucial in photogrammetric processing, and applying Principal Component Analysis can reduce processing times and computational resources.
ISPRS JOURNAL OF PHOTOGRAMMETRY AND REMOTE SENSING
(2022)
Article
Environmental Sciences
Douglas J. Krause, Jefferson T. Hinke, Michael E. Goebel, Wayne L. Perryman
Summary: The study found that behavioral responses by chinstrap penguins, Antarctic fur seals, and leopard seals to UAS flights at 30 m were not significantly different from control periods, compared with traditional ground surveys. Behavioral responses generally increased as UAS flew lower, and for penguins, those increases intensified as the breeding season progressed (i.e., guard and molt stages).
FRONTIERS IN MARINE SCIENCE
(2021)
Article
Environmental Sciences
Benjamin T. Fraser, Russell G. Congalton
Summary: The research utilizes Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) and advanced image processing techniques to estimate tree diameters and various stand-level parameters in forests, with an average error reported. Stand-level parameters were either overestimated or underestimated, with a lesser overestimation for stands larger than 9 hectares. Random forest supervised classification achieved a promising overall accuracy of 85% in identifying large trees, offering local land managers opportunities for better understanding forested ecosystems. Future research on individual tree crown detection, especially for co-dominant or suppressed trees, will further enhance these efforts.
Article
Environmental Sciences
Yajie Liu, Kevin Han, William Rasdorf
Summary: This paper evaluates the significance levels of five influence factors on UAS-based photogrammetry accuracy and investigates their interactions using multiple regression. It also develops prediction models for horizontal and vertical accuracies. The findings of this study can guide surveyors in designing flight configurations for high accuracies and provide reasonable predictions for different flight configurations.
Article
Forestry
Joshua Carpenter, Daniel Rentauskas, Nikhil Makkar, Jinha Jung, Songlin Fei
Summary: Field-based forest inventory plots are crucial for forest studies, providing valuable information about forests. They are now used for validation and training data in forest feature extraction and machine learning algorithms. However, the uncertainty in plot location measurements has undermined their usefulness. A method for accurately measuring plot center coordinates using low-cost targets and orthoimagery has improved the accuracy by an order of magnitude.
JOURNAL OF FORESTRY
(2023)
Article
Computer Science, Hardware & Architecture
Yassine Mekdad, Ahmet Aris, Leonardo Babun, Abdeslam El Fergougui, Mauro Conti, Riccardo Lazzeretti, Selcuk Uluagac
Summary: With the rapid growth of the drone industry, the integration of drones in civilian applications and smart cities is becoming increasingly important. However, the affordability and complexity of drone technology also bring vulnerabilities and threats, leading to significant challenges in security and privacy. This paper extensively surveys the security and privacy issues of drones, providing a systematic classification and investigation of vulnerabilities, threats, attacks, countermeasures, and mitigation techniques. The takeaways and future research directions are also summarized.
Review
Environmental Sciences
Mingyang Lyu, Yibo Zhao, Chao Huang, Hailong Huang
Summary: This article aims to provide readers with an understanding of the latest progress and trends in the field of UAV search and rescue by synthesizing and organizing relevant papers. It discusses the various types and components of UAVs and their importance in SAR operations. The article also reviews the integration of sensors in UAVs for SAR purposes, highlighting their roles in target perception, localization, and identification. Furthermore, it explores the applications of UAVs in SAR, including on-site monitoring and modeling, target perception and localization, and SAR operations such as task assignment, path planning, and collision avoidance. Overall, it presents a comprehensive overview of the significant role of UAVs in enhancing SAR operations and discusses potential avenues for improving their performance.
Article
Chemistry, Analytical
Carlos A. M. Correia, Fabio A. A. Andrade, Agnar Sivertsen, Ihannah Pinto Guedes, Milena Faria Pinto, Aline Gesualdi Manhaes, Diego Barreto Haddad
Summary: Optical image sensors are commonly used in Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) for remote sensing data acquisition. In order to assign a geographic location to the acquired image, a process called direct georeferencing is necessary. This process involves various information and transformations between reference frames, making it a complex operation. However, there is a lack of comprehensive explanation of this process in existing literature. This paper presents a detailed method for direct georeferencing of aerial images acquired by cameras mounted on UAS, providing all the required information, mathematical operations, and implementation steps. The method is validated through simulated and real flights.
Article
Chemistry, Analytical
Ester Martinez-Martin, Eric Ferrer, Ilia Vasilev, Angel P. del Pobil
Summary: The paper presents the UJI aerial librarian robot that utilizes computer vision techniques for automated inventory and book localization in libraries. Using visual markers for self-localization and book tag recognition, the quadrotor robot achieved promising results in a real library setting. The discussed system limitations and challenges are related to similar applications such as automated inventory in warehouses.
Article
Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence
Jinya Su, Xiaoyong Zhu, Shihua Li, Wen-Hua Chen
Summary: Precision Agriculture (PA) is gaining increasing attention in academia and industry due to its potential to enhance crop productivity, reduce costs, and minimize environmental impact. This survey paper provides a comprehensive review of the recent use of UAV sensing systems and AI algorithms in PA applications throughout the crop life-cycle, as well as the challenges and prospects for future development in the agriculture sector.
Review
Engineering, Marine
Jiqiang Li, Guoqing Zhang, Changyan Jiang, Weidong Zhang
Summary: The rising frequency of ocean activities increases the occurrence of sudden accidents at sea, highlighting the crucial role of maritime search and rescue (MSAR) in marine transportation. Traditional maritime search systems can be burdensome and inefficient, while unmanned systems offer advantages such as high efficiency and rapid deployment. This paper provides a comprehensive survey of the state of the art of maritime unmanned search system development, including UAVs, USVs, UUVs, and cooperative heterogeneous vehicles. It discusses the types, advantages, and application scenarios of unmanned search systems, theoretical progress, engineering applications, limitations, and proposes a novel cooperative platform utilizing an USV and two UAVs.
Article
Computer Science, Hardware & Architecture
Rizwana Shahzadi, Mudassar Ali, Humayun Zubair Khan, Muhammad Naeem
Summary: There has been significant technological advancement in wireless communication in the last few decades, transitioning from voice communication to interactive multimedia applications. The increasing demand for high data rate and connectivity in user equipment calls for new technological trends to meet the requirements of 5G and beyond networks. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are seen as promising candidates for future wireless communication networks due to their mobility, low cost, and Line of sight (LOS) communication capabilities, but they also present challenges that need to be addressed.
JOURNAL OF NETWORK AND COMPUTER APPLICATIONS
(2021)
Article
Environmental Sciences
Benjamin T. Fraser, Russell G. Congalton
Summary: Forest disturbances caused by pests, diseases, and other factors can lead to significant economic losses. Utilizing unmanned aerial systems (UAS) and multispectral imagery can help differentiate between different tree health statuses and improve the efficiency of collecting forestry data.
Article
Environmental Sciences
Jong-Seok Lee, Ji-Yeon Baek, Jisun Shin, Jae-Seong Kim, Young-Heon Jo
Summary: Optical remote sensing using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is proposed as an effective method for monitoring changes in marine environments, specifically the rapidly changing suspended sediment concentration (SSC). By developing an SSC algorithm and combining optical field measurements with water sample measurements, a wider SSC map can be generated for real-time monitoring of fluctuations in SSC.
Article
Geography, Physical
Jae-In Kim, Chang-Uk Hyun, Hyangsun Han, Hyun-Cheol Kim
Summary: This paper proposes a robust method to generate high-quality DSMs for drifting sea ice, introducing improvements like relative georeferencing, match inspection, adaptive search-window adjustment, and robust vertical positioning. Experimental results show significant quality enhancements compared with existing methods.
ISPRS JOURNAL OF PHOTOGRAMMETRY AND REMOTE SENSING
(2021)