Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Research Papers (original) (raw)

El procesamiento de datos fotogramétricos mediante VANT para resaltar rasgos arqueológicos. Dos aplicaciones en la cuenca de México. (En prensa: Sistemas de información geográfica para arqueólogos: Repensando el espacio en contextos arqueológicos mesoamericanos. Armando Trijullo (ed.) El colegio Mexiquense.)-NO CITAR SIN EL PERMISO DE LOS AUTORES-Resumen: El uso de vehículos aéreos no tripulados (VANT´s) es cada vez más frecuente en arqueología con el fin de obtener ortofotos de alta resolución o modelos digitales de elevación resultado del procesamiento fotogramétrico. No obstante, los resultados pueden procesarse mediante diferentes algoritmos que han demostrado su utilidad en el procesamiento de modelos LiDAR (Ligth Detection and Range), permitiendo eliminar la vegetación y destacar rasgos de probable origen antrópico. Si bien los datos obtenidos por los sensores aerotransportados mediante VANT´s requieren de una capacidad de cómputo respetable y del uso de softwares especializados, se obtienen resultados importantes en un tiempo relativamente corto y a un costo mucho menor a si se utilizaran datos LiDAR tradicionales. En esta aportación presentamos los resultados obtenidos en el Cerro Yohualtécatl (Cerro Guerrero), en la Sierra de Guadalupe y en las chinampas arqueológicas de San Gregorio Atlapulco, Xochimilco, en donde empleamos análisis del tipo Sky View Factor, Red Relief Map, entre otros, los cuales fueron muy útiles para localizar y definir estructuras de tipo antrópico. Introducción: Vehículos aéreos no tripulados (VANT´s) y análisis geográficos, una necesidad en arqueología. La arqueología a lo largo de su historia ha adoptado diferentes metodologías para el registro y la investigación del patrimonio, dentro de éstas, el análisis mediante fotografía aérea ha adquirido un papel fundamental (Forte y Campana, 2016; Musson et al., 2013). En este

- by
- •
- Archaeology, Photogrammetry, Landscape Archaeology, Aztecs

Until recently most militaries tended to see moral issues through the lens of rules and regulations. Today, however, many armed forces consider teaching virtues to be an important complement to imposing rules and codes from above. A closer look reveals that it is mainly established military virtues such as honour, courage and loyalty that dominate both the lists of virtues and values of most militaries and the growing body of literature on military virtues. Although there is evidently still a role for these traditional martial virtues, it is equally evident that they are not particularly relevant to, for instance, military personnel operating drones. This chapter looks into the ethics of unmanned warfare from the perspective of military virtues and military ethics education, and addresses the question of what we need to solve that just-mentioned misalignment: 1) a new set of virtues; 2) a different interpretation of the existing virtues; or 3) a different approach altogether, that is, an alternative to teaching virtues? That we have to think about such questions is at least partly because unmanned systems bring risk asymmetry in war to a new level, making warlike virtues such as physical courage by and large obsolete. The last section of this chapter therefore addresses the question: to what extent does the possibility of riskless warfare makes drone use ‘virtue-less’?

- by Peter Olsthoorn
- •
- Military Ethics, Applied Ethics, Peace and Conflict Studies, Virtue Ethics

The following article aims at presenting a new photogrammetric application for precision agriculture. Photogrammetry has been used for numerous engineering tasks and for the past decade the UAV photogrammetry, in particular, has proved to be applicable in the sphere of agriculture. Better techniques and solutions have been sought by scientists in order to improve yields, preserve the environment and therefore increase the potential of agriculture. The chosen study field has been monitored for the past two years. It regards a corn and rye fields, surrounded by grass and forests. The area is located in the west part of the Czech Republic, near the village of Vysoké Sedliště. The location has been chosen for its historical and archaeological significance as it was fortified in the past and numerous battles took place in the 17 th century. The purpose of the study is to analyse the development of certain crops. It has been claimed by agronomists that there might be still water causing drainage to some crops. The survey was carried out by an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) eBee by senseFly owned by the Department of Geomatics. The agricultural fields were mapped in April, June and July. The images were captured by multispectral and a thermal camera and later processed in Pix4Dmapper. The results of the study are calculated Digital Surface Model and index maps respectively for each month.

- by Ogün KARABULUT
- •
- Uav, UAV systems, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), Insansız Hava Araçları

Bu makalede, tüm dönerkanat rotorları dönebilen (tilt mekanizmasına sahip), üç dönerkanatlı, dikey kalkış iniş yapabilen insansız hava aracının tasarım süreci sunulmuştur. Bu kapsamda üç rotorlu insansız hava aracı için literatür araştırması, malzeme ve bileşen seçimi, modelleme alt yapısının kurulması, enerji tüketim analizi, titreşim analizi, statik yük analizi ve fiziksel sistem testleri gibi çalışmalar yürütülmüştür.

- by Alp Kaçar
- •
- Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)

İnsansız Hava Aracı (İHA) sistemi; temel olarak yer kontrol istasyonu (YKİ) hava aracından (HA) oluşmaktadır. YKİ’de bulunan bilgisayar içinde koşan YKİ yazılımı sayesinde Yer Veri Terminali (YVT) aracılığıyla HA ile kablosuz iletişim sağlanır. HA’nda bulunan Hava Veri Terminali (HVT) aracılığıyla alınan komutlar Uçuş Kontrol Sistemine (UKS) ve Görev Kontrol Bilgisayarına (GKB) aktararılarak otonom uçuş gerçekleştirilir. YKİ’de bulunan RC kumanda ile İHA, UKS devrede olmadan elle uzaktan komutalı olarak kullanılabilir. Ayrıca, ihtiyaca yönelik olarak HA’na yerleştirilmiş olan faydalı yüklerin (FY) kontrolü ve FY verilerin değerlendirmesi de YKİ üzerinden yapılmaktadır.

- by Ogün KARABULUT
- •
- Uav, UAV systems, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), UAV MODELLING AND SIMULATION

This poster shows a new alternative propeller structure that can generate automatic kinetic energy for any large ship, airplane, and electric generators. The performance and efficiency are directly connected to the position of 28... more

- by Mario Arturo Ruiz Estrada
- •
- Uav, Propeller, Airplanes, UAV systems

This paper concentrates on the design, analysis, and development of fixed-wing hand launch unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). This flight can able to carry the payloads of 0.8. The design process involves the conceptual, preliminary, and detailed design. This paper involves the investigation of the aerodynamic characteristics over the wing to enhance the aerodynamic design of the UAV. This analysis includes estimating the best gliding ratio to increase the flight mission and attain the maximum altitude. This simulation will be performed for subsonic flow with Mach number 0.04202(14.3m/s). The manufacturing of the UAV is done using composite materials like glass fiber of both (1mm and 2 mm) thickness, carbon fiber of 2mm, and carbon rod is used for connecting the empennage to the fuselage. The detailed design has been done in CATIA V5 and the analysis of the wing has been done using XFLR, ANSYS (fluent).

Coastline change and human activities in shoreline zones are two factors indicating the vulnerability and the quality of a coastal environment. In this article, coastline evolution and spatiotemporal differences on coastal touristic infrastructure are presented as two case studies. Both case studies have increasing interest among scientists monitoring sensitive coastal areas, and for stakeholders evolved in the tourist industry. The study is twofold: monitors the shoreline evolution and examines how the shoreline behavior affects the seasonal anthropogenic touristic infrastructure. Shoreline detection methodology integrates unmanned aerial systems (UAS) or high-resolution satellite images for data acquisition, and geographic object-based image analysis (GEOBIA) for the shoreline recognition and the infrastructure change detection. The methodology used produced robust results in the aspect of mapping and detecting coastline changes, coastal erosion and the human pressure due to speci...

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) play an increasingly important role in various areas of life, including in terms of protection and security. As a result of fires, volcanic eruptions, or other emergencies, huge amounts of toxic gases, dust, and other substances are emitted into the environment, which, together with high temperature, often leads to serious environmental contamination. Based on the available literature and patent databases, an analysis of the available UAVs models was carried out in terms of their applicability in air contaminated conditions in industrial areas, in the event of emergencies, such as fire, chemical contamination. The possibilities of using the devices were analyzed in terms of weather conditions, construction, and used materials in CBRN (chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear) threat situations. It was found that, thanks to the use of appropriate sensors, cameras, and software of UAVs integrated with a given system, it is possible to obtain informat...

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) assisted data collection is not a new concept and has been used in various mobile ad hoc networks. In this paper, we propose a caching assisted scheme alternative to routing in MANETs for the purpose of wildlife monitoring. Rather than deploying a routing protocol, data is collected and transported to and from a base station using a UAV. Although some literature exists on such an approach, we propose the use of intermediate caching between the mobile nodes and compare it to a baseline scenario where no caching is used. The paper puts forward our communication design where we have simulated the movement of multiple mobile sensor nodes in a field that move according to the Levy walk model imitating wildlife animal foraging and a UAV that makes regular trips across the field to collect data from them. The unmanned aerial vehicle can collect data not only from the current node it is communicating with but also data of other nodes that this node came into contact with. Simulations show that exchanging cached data is highly advantages as the drone can indirectly communicate with many more mobile nodes.

This paper presents the methodology of design of a nonlinear robust controller for attitude regulation and its implementation in an experimental platform of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) quadrotor. Details on the kinematic and dynamic modeling based on the Euler-Lagrange formalism are provided, as well as the particulars of the design of a nonlinear robust H-infinity PID controller to regulate the rotational moments. The performance and effectiveness of the proposed controller are tested in a simulation and an experimental platform. The performance of the proposed controller is compared with a conventional PID controller by using the integral square error (ISE) as performance parameter. Experimental results help to demonstrate the correct operation of the system for real-time applications in the presence of unmodeled dynamics and the uncertainties of the parameters.

- by Juan P . Ortiz
- •
- Robust control, Nonlinear Control, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), Quadrotor

The Specific Operations Risk Assessment (SORA) methodology proposed by the Joint Authorities for Rulemaking on Unmanned Systems (JARUS) includes a ground risk buffer to protect people from a falling unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). This article calculates a ground risk buffer for large unmanned helicopters, three of which are of a type and size normally used for carrying people. It is shown that the required buffer for all helicopters analysed is dependent on rotor disk loading rather than the mass of the helicopter per se. The calculated buffers are potentially more restrictive than the rules that apply in the manned configuration of these aircraft, and the reasons for the differences are discussed.

Integrated System Health Management (ISHM) is a promising technology that fuses sensor data and historical state-of-health information of components and subsystems to provide actionable information and enable intelligent decision-making regarding the operation and maintenance of aerospace systems. ISHM fundamentally relies on assessments and predictions of system health, including the early detection of failures and estimation of Remaining Useful Life (RUL). Model-based, data-driven or hybrid reasoning techniques can be utilized to maximise the timeliness and reliability of diagnosis and prognosis information. The benefits of ISHM include enhancing the maintainability, reliability, safety and performance of systems. The next evolution of the ISHM concept, Intelligent Health and Mission Management (IHMM), delves deeper into the utilization of on-line system health predictions to modify mission profiles to ensure safety and reliability, as well as efficiency through predictive integ...

Significant advances in sensor technology, along with economies of scale due to large production volumes have supported the miniaturization of navigation sensors, allowing widespread low-cost integration on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS). In small-size UAS applications, standalone sensors are not a viable option since the reduction in navigation sensor form-factor, weight and cost typically results in lowered accuracy and precision. Fusion of multiple sensor measurements in UAS navigation systems can support greater accuracy, integrity and update rates than is achievable employing individual sensors. This chapter introduces the fundamentals of state-estimation methods employed on UAS and presents different sensor integration architectures, along with an assessment of their advantages and trade-offs. Attention is devoted primarily to recursive optimal estimation algorithms such as the Kalman Filter and its variants owing to its prolific employment in various classes of UAS. The need to support robust navigation performance in Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) denied environments, and the proliferation of visual sensors has led to the development of numerous methods for integrating visual sensor measurements (primarily) with inertial sensors. Therefore, the reader is introduced to the most popular system architectures for visual-inertial sensor integration, in order to provide an understanding of the current state-of-the-art and to support the identification of future research pathways.

- by Roberto Sabatini
- •
- Robotics, Aerospace Engineering, Aeronautical Engineering, Autonomous Robotics

Unmanned air vehicle (UAV) became an alternative airborne remote sensing technique, due to providing very high resolution and low cost spatial data and short processing time. Particularly, optical UAVs are frequently utilized in various applications such as mapping, agriculture, and forestry. Especially for precise agriculture purposes, the UAVs were equipped with multispectral cameras which enables to classify land cover easily. In this study, the land cover classification potential of DJI Phantom IV Multispectral, one of the most preferred agricultural UAVs in the world, was investigated using spectral angle mapper, minimum distance and maximum likelihood pixel-based classification techniques and object-based classification. In the investigation, a part of Gebze Technical University (GTU) Northern Campus, includes a large variety of land cover classes, was selected as the study area. The UAV aerial photos were achieved from 70 m flight altitude and processed using structure from motion (SfM)-based image matching software Agisoft Metashape. The pixel-based and object-based land cover classification processes were completed with ENVI and eCognition software respectively. 16 independent land cover classes were classified and the results demonstrated that the accuracies are 73.46% in spectral angle mapper, 75.27% in minimum distance and 93.56% in maximum likelihood pixel-based classification techniques and 90.09% in nearest neighbour object-based classification.

- by Mertcan Nazar and +1
- •
- Multispectral Imaging, Clustering and Classification Methods, Structure from Motion, Network RTK

This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) allows you to create digital surface models (DSM) and orthophotos of an area in a short time by photogrammetric methods. In the last decade, UAV and Global Positioning System (GPS) have been used to create real, reliable and high-resolution maps. In this study, the effect of flight height on DSM and orthophoto was investigated. Two flight plans at a height of 30 to 50 meters were prepared. Images taken with UAV were used to produce DSM and orthophoto. Resolutions of maps were compared when models were produced. Compared to a flight height of 50 meters, a more detailed and high-resolution model was created with 30 meters. Although the flight data from 30 meters gave better results, the flight process took longer. Also, more photos were taken and the file size took up more space. As a result of this comparison, it was determined that the flight height should be determined according to the terrain structure, accuracy, precision and time-cost balance expected from the job.

- by Aydın Alptekin
- •
- Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)

On/off patch spraying based on weed maps is used in site-specific weed management. Two prerequisites for realising patch spraying are accurate weed detection and targeting of the herbicides on weed patches. There is plenty in the literature about weed detection, but little attention has been paid to the spatial accuracy of herbicide application. This study was conducted in order to assess the extent to which patch-sprayed herbicides are targeted precisely according to pre-loaded prescription maps and to evaluate a new spatial assessment method. The new method consisted of spraying with red Ponceau 4R dye, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) imagery and spatial image analysis based on a geographic information system (GIS). The sprayed dye was clearly visible in aereal images and the locations of the sprayed areas were compared with the locations given by the prescription maps. Four different commercial sprayers with boom section width in the range of 0.5 to 3 m and driving speed in the range of 2.5 to 8 km h −1 were used in ten experiments. All the experiments were carried out in autumn in stubble fields. The results showed that the new method was fast and reliable. The incorrectly sprayed area outside targeted areas on prescription maps averaged 81% for three different sprayers with 3 m boom sections, and 5% for a sprayer with 0.5 m boom sections (individual spray nozzle control). The target areas not sprayed within the planned weed patch areas averaged 6% of the pre-defined patch area for spray-ers with 3 m boom sections, and 14% for the sprayer with 0.5 m boom sections. This study revealed that the sprayer with 0.5 m boom sections had a controller that was not quick enough at opening and closing spray nozzles at normal driving speeds. Log files from the sprayer console overestimated the sprayed area by 24% and were less accurate than the spatial analysis of the sprayed areas.

This paper concentrates on the design, analysis, and development of fixed-wing hand launch unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). This flight can able to carry payloads of 0.8. The design process involves the conceptual, preliminary, and detailed design. This paper involves the investigation of the aerodynamic characteristics over the wing to enhance the aerodynamic design of the UAV. This analysis includes estimating the best gliding ratio to increase the flight mission and attain the maximum altitude. This simulation will be performed for subsonic flow with Mach number 0.04202(14.3m/s). The manufacturing of the UAV is done using composite materials like glass fiber of both (1mm and 2 mm) thickness, carbon fiber of 2mm, and carbon rod is used for connecting the empennage to the fuselage. The detailed design has been done in CATIA V5 and the analysis of the wing has been done using XFLR, ANSYS (fluent).

Değişen güvenlik anlayışının doğal sonucu olarak çatışma ortamları da değişmiştir. Dolayısıyla İnsansız Hava Araçları (İHA) ve Silahlı İnsansız Hava Araçları (SİHA) günümüzün değişen çatışma ortamları için hayati derecede önemli görülen araçlar haline gelmiştir. Çalışmanın amacı, bu değişen çatışma ortamlarında SİHA'ların durumunu tespit etmek, kullanımına ilişkin karar mekanizmaları bağlamında yetki ve sorumluluk ilişkisini açıklamaktır. Çalışmanın yöntemi, görsel ve yazılı basın ile doküman ve literatüre bakılarak tanımlayıcı bir araştırma yöntemidir. Abstract Conflict environments have also changed as a result of changing security. So that Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) and Armed Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (AUAV) have become vital vehicles for today's changing conflict environments. The aim of this study is to determine the status of the AUAVs in these changing conflict environments and to explain the relationship between authority and responsibility in the context of decision-making mechanisms. The method of the study is a descriptive research method based on visual and printed media, documents and literature.

We would like to invite you to join this exciting new project as a chapter contributor. Since this is a textbook, a great deal of this chapter entails a survey on the topic under the paradigm of cyber-physical systems, what can be done onboard and remotely, the distributed nature of the system and some exercises on futurology (anticipating trends can shed some light on upcoming designs). IET will bring great visibility to your work. You are welcome to suggest another topic/chapter title if you feel it would be more suitable. Each chapter should be around 20-25 pages each and can be submitted as a Word or Latex File. The IET will send you additional information (formatting, permission form, etc.) with the contributor's agreement once you have agreed to contribute to the book. Visit http:// www.theiet.org/resources/author-hub/books/index.cfm to get all information you need as a contributor to an IET research-level book. Each book is expected to have a total number of 500 printed pages (based on approximately 550 words per page with a 20% allowance for figures and tables). We have included a tentative schedule and list of topics below. If this is something you would consider, please send me the title of your chapter, a short description/abstract of the chapter content, and your full contact details. We will expect original content and new results for this book. You can, of course, reuse published material but the percentage of material reuse for the chapter should be less than 40%. The IET will run a piracy software on the full manuscript to control that you are including original material and will reject chapters who contain a large amount of already-published material so please do take this into consideration.

- by Vania V Estrela
- •
- Robotics, Computer Science, Computer Graphics, Robotics (Computer Science)

Illeez M. (2014). Capabilities of unmanned aircraft
systems in hybrid wars. International Journal of Unmanned Systems
Engineering. 2(4): 46-58. During post Iraq War and especially with the
Afghanistan Operation, unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) became
subject to many disciplines ranging from strategy to electronics and
law. Fast changes and advancements in those systems which are
candidate to be the most effective weapon systems of modern wars,
make it difficult for states to put forward mid-term and long-term
plans. Hybrid warfare is one of the concepts aiming to describe future
operational environment. Hybrid warfare is not a new kind of war, but
it is based on the idea that future wars will not be simple enough to
divert as conventional and asymmetrical wars. In this context, hybrid
warfare presents a picture of an environment in which conventional
and asymmetrical, terrorist, cyber and illegal threats can be used in
unison. UAS can be evaluated as one of the most effective weapon
systems that will be required in such a complex and unstable
operational environment. The aim of this study is to explore the
capabilities that UAS can offer within the scope of the hybrid warfare
concept.

- by Mustafa İlleez
- •
- Unmanned Aircraft Systems, Aviation, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), Hybrid War

The combination of geological, topographical and climatic conditions causes mass movements. Rockfall, which is a frequently seen disaster at mountainous regions, gives damage to residential areas and transportation corridors. Rockfall barriers are being designed to capture falling rocks worldwide. The classical method applied in rockfall analysis is 3D modelling of the study area to determine rockfall trajectory with the help of Digital surface model (DSM). 3D rockfall simulation is performed in order to determine bounce height, maximum run-out distance and kinetic energy of rocks. DSM of the study area needs to be accurately determined to properly design barrier system. Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) can be used to prepare actual DSM from inaccessible areas. In this study, we prepared the DSM of the area which was affected from rockfall due to high rainfall with using a UAV.

- by Aydın Alptekin
- •
- Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), Rockfall

The unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is one of the mobile robots which has grown rapidly in popularity in recent years. UAVs have been used in various activities to convey important information on the aerial transportation system. However, an application to get real-time information from UAVs remains a challenging task. Therefore, this paper presents an integration system to optimise the use of UAVs for aerial surveillance. The proposed system explains the design and implementation a UAV system which consists of on-board and ground stations. The on-board system has the function to send UAV flight data, send aerial images and carry items using a gripper which equipped with sensors to detect obstacles. The ground station has the function to control UAV flights, receive and display UAV flight data and aerial images, display the attitude of the UAV and send commands to move the camera and gripper. Flight controllers in this system use non-linear complementary filter on SO(3) to estimate the attitude of the UAV and proportional-integral (PI) controller to stabilise the UAV flight. By providing the real-time acquisition data of the UAV, we believe this system can be a useful tool for many implementations using UAV.

- by Wahyu Rahmaniar
- •
- Robotics, Electronics, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), Quadcopter

In recent years, with the remarkable development in game engines, virtual reality (VR) technologies, which immerse users inside a synthetic environment, became very popular and were increasingly integrated into the visualisation of geospatial data. In the Covid-19 pandemic, restricting people's mobility, the interest in VR visits was rapidly increased. In the scope of a scientific research project, a three dimensional (3D) virtual tour for Gebze Technical University Campus was generated by integrating very high resolution unmanned air vehicle (UAV) data into a virtual environment utilizing Unity game engine. Regarding high geolocation accuracy and spatial resolution, low cost, short processing time, and 3D realistic model generation performance, UAV data is largely demanded in varied scientific and commercial applications. In this study, the campus area was collected with 2.18 cm ground sampling distance (GSD) from 80 m flight altitude using 20 MegaPixel UAV digital camera. The UAV data was processed by Agisoft Metashape, structure from motion (SFM) based image matching software, and then high-quality 3D textured models were generated. The aerial imagery was oriented by ground control points (GCPs), carefully distributed in the study area. The geometric accuracy of the image orientation was calculated as ±8 mm (~0.4 pixels). For virtual reality integration, first, the 3D textured models derived from UAV data were imported into the Unity game engine. After that, optimization techniques including occlusion culling, space subdivision were applied to the models to prevent problems that may arise due to transferring high poly models to game engines. Thus, objects and textures have been transferred with the highest resolution to achieve a realistic virtual experience. For creating a more detailed and realistic environment, 3D models of trees, lighting poles, benches, arbours, and information panels were added to the model using available assets in Unity. Also, the metadata about buildings (e.g. building name, floor area and the number of staff) were added to the 3D building models. Finally, a player with a first-person camera is implemented for the virtual tour in the integrated 3D models. In this study, the encountered problems and recommended solutions for creating a virtual campus are presented.

- by Taskin Kavzoglu and +3
- •
- Virtual Reality (Computer Graphics), Structure from Motion, 3d Modeling, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)

This article covers the efforts of USCG Sector Delaware Bay at leveraging private Unmanned Aviation Systems to act as a human capital resource multiplier during times of disasters. It primarily focuses on using UAS for cell tower replacements after hurricanes or earthquakes. Lastly it details efforts at using UAS to deliver humanitarian supplies autonomously from vessels to land targets which has in the past been a supply chain problem.

Detection of potential hijackings of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) is an important capability to have for the safety of the future airspace and prevention of loss of life and property. In this paper, we propose using basic statistical measures as a fingerprint to flight patterns that can be checked against previous flights. We generated baseline flights and then simulated hijacking scenarios to determine the extent of the feasibility of this method. Our results indicated that all of the direct hijacking scenarios were detected, but flights with control instability caused by malicious acts were not detected.

- by Nusrat Jahan and +2
- •
- UAV systems, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), UAV MODELLING AND SIMULATION

The next generation of wireless networks, 5G, and beyond will bring more complexities and configuration issues to set the new wireless networks, besides requirements for important and new services. These new generations of wireless networks, to be implemented, are in extreme dependence on the adoption of artificial intelligence techniques. The integration of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) in wireless communication networks has opened several possibilities with increased flexibility and performance. Besides, they are considered as one of the most promising technologies to be used in the new wireless networks. Thus, UAVs are expected to be one of the most important applications to provide a new way of connectivity to the 5G network, and it is expected to grow from being a 19.3 billion USD industry in 2019 to 45.8 billion USD by 2025. In this paper, we provide a proposal of handover management on aerial 5G network utilizing the fuzzy system. The simulations performed prove the benefits of our proposal by QoS/QoE (quality of service/quality of experience) metrics.

- by Intelligence & Robotics and +1
- •
- Fuzzy Systems, Handover, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), Drones

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or unmanned aircraft systems (UASs) are synonymous with drones and are used interchangeably; its many avatars having the same meaning. This paper covers how advancement in technology has enhanced the features of the drone in scope and scale to specific functions demanded across a spectrum of industries. By presenting a review of the application of drones as a cost-effective option, a variety of purposes in various industries is served as well. By using a host of sensors, vision system, and micro-controllers onboard coupled with IoT, the effectiveness of drones in collecting, analyzing, and providing data has increased multifold, upgrading existing usage and throwing open new avenues of applications. To alleviate the possibilities of the transport-related congestion and its consequences, developments in the Internet of Drones (IoD) architecture and system are studied for seamless operations, to manage the heavy traffic of drones envisaged in their airw...

- by Shubham Nagar
- •
- Robotics, Computer Science, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), Drones

1. Regular monitoring of animal populations must be established to ensure wildlife protection, especially when pressure on animals is high. The recent development of drones or unmanned aircraft systems (UASs) opens new opportunities. UASs have several advantages, including providing data at high spatial and temporal resolution, providing systematic, permanent data, having low operational costs and being low-risk for the operators. However, UASs have some constraints, such as short flight endurance. 2. We reviewed studies in which wildlife populations were monitored by using drones, described accomplishments to date and evaluated the range of possibilities UASs offer to provide new perspectives in future research. 3. We focused on four main topics: 1) the available systems and sensors; 2) the types of survey plan and detection possibilities; 3) contributions towards anti-poaching surveillance; and 4) legislation and ethics. 4. We found that small fixed-wing UASs are most commonly used because these aircraft provide a viable compromise between price, logistics and flight endurance. The sensors are typically electro-optic or infrared cameras, but there is the potential to develop and test new sensors. 5. Despite various flight plan possibilities, mostly classical line transects have been employed, and it would be of great interest to test new methods to adapt to the limitations of UASs. Detection of many species is possible, but statistical approaches are unavailable if valid inventories of large mammals are the purpose. 6. Contributions of UASs to anti-poaching surveillance are not yet well documented in the scientific literature, but initial studies indicate that this approach could make important contributions to conservation in the next few years. 7. Finally, we conclude that one of the main factors impeding the use of UASs is legislation. Restrictions in the use of airspace prevent researchers from testing all possibilities, and adaptations to the relevant legislation will be necessary in future.

- by Jonathan Lisein and +2
- •
- Wildlife Conservation, Wildlife monitoring, Mammal, UAV systems

Дана оценка преимуществ и недостатков существующих аэродинамических схем летательных аппа-ратов (ЛА). Выявлена оптимальная аэродинамическая схема с точки зрения достижения высокой ве-совой и жесткосной эффективности, а также с точки зрения улучшения аэродинамических и летно-технических характеристик (ЛТХ). Дана оценка относительно применения замкнутой схемы при соз-дании легких беспилотных летательных аппаратов (БпЛА). Проведен широчайший обзор и сравни-тельный анализ компоновочных решений ЛА замкнутой аэродинамической схемы. Определены пер-спективные направления исследований по изучению аэродинамических, весовых, жесткосных, а также летно-технических характеристик для ЛА замкнутой схемы. Предложены варианты оптимальных компоновочных решений ЛА замкнутой аэродинамической схемы, учитывая статистические данные существующих компоновочных схем. Ключевые слова: аэродинамическая схема, летательный аппарат замкнутой схемы, компоновочное решение, аэродинамические характеристики, ЛТХ.

- by Олег Хоминич and +1
- •
- Aerodynamics, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), Joined Wing Structures

In Europe, fire represents an important issue for a lot of researchers due to economic losses, environmental disasters, and human death. In the last decade, the European parliament sheds light upon this problem by dealing with the community project" Forest Focus". Thus, researchers and scientific research departments of European companies begin to work on solving and creating different techniques to deal with such a problem, these research centers found that the most attractive and accurate way of solving such a problem was using an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). In this paper, the research center at Drone Hopper Company analysis the deficiencies for forest fire fighting systems, in order to start designing its new prototype of a special drone named WILD HOPPER, solving all the shortcomings of similar systems. This paper is the first of a group of research papers that will take place during designing and producing our WILD-HOPPER system.

- by Ahmed Refaat Ragab
- •
- Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)

Drone technology is further increasing in popularity and demand and drone education is already implemented in certain college courses. This paper presents a virtual simulation module that will cater to the needs of the senior high school level and that would lead to a module that is essentially less technical and more interactive. The virtual simulations module will be an integrated website which contains fundamental information on what a drone is and how to operate one. It will also incorporate an interactive game simulation wherein the drone model created from 3D printing will be integrated in. To verify the achievement of the goals of this paper, the researchers will conduct a survey among a randomized pool of senior high school students, which will include a pre and post-test about the module. Through this surveys that the participants answered, the researchers used t-test methodology to conclude that the module is indeed effective on delivering the information to the students with up to 90% positive response about the module. Additionally, the researchers have taken into account the preferences and suggestions of the students who participated.

- by Charles Brian Toribio
- •
- Mechanical Engineering, Robotics, Education, Design

Population assessments and species monitoring for many endangered marine megafauna are limited by the challenges of identifying and tracking individuals that live underwater in remote and sometimes inaccessible areas. Manatees can acquire scars from watercraft injury and other incidences that can be used to identify individuals. Here we describe a novel method for photo-identification of Antillean manatees Trichechus manatus manatus using aerial imagery captured during flights with a small multirotor drone. Between 2016 and 2017, we conducted 103 flights to detect and observe manatees in Belize, primarily at St. George's Caye (SGC) near the Belize Barrier Reef. Review of aerial videos from these flights resulted in 279 sightings of manatees (245 adults, 34 calves). High-resolution images of individual manatees were extracted and classified according to image quality and distinctiveness of individual manatees for photoidentification. High-quality images of manatees classified as sufficiently distinctive were used to create a catalog of 17 identifiable individuals. At SGC, 21% of all sighted adult manatees (N = 214) were considered photo-identifiable over time. We suggest that the method can be used for investigating individual site fidelity, habitat use, and behavior of manatee populations. Our photoidentification protocol has the potential to improve long-term monitoring of Antillean manatees in Belize and can be applied throughout clear, shallow waters in the Caribbean and elsewhere.

- by Eric Angel Ramos
- •
- Marine Biology, Geography, Conservation Biology, Conservation

Accelerated development of arming and military equipment at the end of the 20 th and the beginning of the 21 st century caused development of unmanned aircraft vehicles which application had begun at the end of the 20 th century. Unmanned aerial vehicles are used today for different purposes although their development was intended for system of defence and security. Drones have wide spectrum of possibilities therefore they have unlimited usage both commercial and country defence and security purposes. Drones have become unavoidable part in arming of police and military units in the world, and their versatile usage have classified them as the most important combat means without which modern operation is unthinkable. Possibilities of using drones in operations in the urban environment are presented and explained in this paper. The focus is on the analysis of the characteristics of drones in terms of their ability to be used in an urban environment with restrictions dictating urban space and the modern way of conducting combat operations.

- by Aleksandar Milić and +1
- •
- UAV systems, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), Drones, Military Drones
- by Philippe Allard
- •
- Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)

As the world is digitizing fast, the increase in Big and Small Data offers opportunities to enrich official statistics for reporting on Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). However, survey data coming from an increased number of organizations (Small Data) and Big Data offer challenges in terms of data heterogeneity. This paper describes a methodology for combining various data sources to create a more comprehensive dataset on SDG 6.1.1. (proportion of population using safely managed drinking water services). We enabled digital volunteers to trace buildings on satellite imagery and used the traces on OpenStreetMap to facilitate visual detection of water points on Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) imagery and estimate the number of people served per water point. Combining data on water points identified on our UAV imagery with data on water points from field surveys improves the overall quality in terms of removal of inconsistencies and enrichment of attribute information. Satellite image...

An UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle), or the drones, or the RC aircrafts are now a days in trends with the hobbyists, armed forces or the kids for playful purposes. But if we see look around us, we will find that these drones can help us in day to day life in saving some life which are in danger. Drones are prepared on the basis of some particular application like aerial photography etc. But we the upcoming engineers should hold our responsibilities and prepare something useful for the man on the front that could be a great serving for the nation and as well as for them who really need this equipment for safeguarding our motherland.

- by Vaibhav Dixit
- •
- Flight Dynamics and Control, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), Drones

Maintenance and rehabilitation of the road are very serious actions. Therefore, road conditions should be inspected accurately before taking these actions. Manual and visual inspection in the field is the traditionally used method to monitor road conditions. However, it is time-consuming, labor-intense and costly. In addition, the traditional inspection method is unsafe directly for the inspectors and indirectly for primary users of the road, such as pedestrians and drivers. In this study, the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) was used to inspect the road condition. UAV technology is becoming a valuable tool for collecting data efficiently and accurately. The proposed method involved three steps. First, several images were acquired from a UAV flight. Then, these images were used to generate a three-dimensional (3D) point cloud, digital surface model and orthomosaic. Finally, road distresses were detected and measured from two-dimensional (2D) and 3D data. The measurements obtained from the proposed methodology were compared against the measurements obtained from the traditional inspection method. It was found that both measurements produced similar results. In conclusion, the use of the UAV measurement technique was found to be suitable for detecting road distress. Given the advantages of the proposed methodology, it can also be inferred that UAVs can be used instead of the traditional inspection method.

- by Mustafa Zeybek
- •
- DSM, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), Potholes, orthomosaic

This paper proposes a thresholding approach for crack detection in an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) based infrastructure inspection system. The proposed algorithm performs recur-sively on the intensity histogram of UAV-taken images to exploit their crack-pixels appearing at the low intensity interval. A quantified criterion of interclass contrast is proposed and employed as an object cost and stop condition for the recursive process. Experiments on different datasets show that our algorithm outper-forms different segmentation approaches to accurately extract crack features of some commercial buildings.

- by Manh Duong Phung
- •
- Crack detection, Thresholding, UAV systems, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)

Identifying and characterizing vascular plants in time and space is required in various disciplines, e.g. in forestry, conservation and agriculture. Remote sensing emerged as a key technology revealing both spatial and temporal vegetation patterns. Harnessing the ever growing streams of remote sensing data for the increasing demands on vegetation assessments and monitoring requires efficient, accurate and flexible methods for data analysis. In this respect, the use of deep learning methods is trend-setting, enabling high predictive accuracy, while learning the relevant data features independently in an end-to-end fashion. Very recently, a series of studies have demonstrated that the deep learning method of Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) is very effective to represent spatial patterns enabling to extract a wide array of vegetation properties from remote sensing imagery. This review introduces the principles of CNN and distils why they are particularly suitable for vegetation remote sensing. The main part synthesizes current trends and developments, including considerations about spectral resolution, spatial grain, different sensors types, modes of reference data generation, sources of existing reference data, as well as CNN approaches and architectures. The literature review showed that CNN can be applied to various problems, including the detection of individual plants or the pixel-wise segmentation of vegetation classes, while numerous studies have evinced that CNN outperform shallow machine learning methods. Several studies suggest that the ability of CNN to exploit spatial patterns particularly facilitates the value of very high spatial resolution data. The modularity in the common deep learning frameworks allows a high flexibility for the adaptation of architectures, whereby especially multi-modal or multi-temporal applications can benefit. An increasing availability of techniques for visualizing features learned by CNNs will not only contribute to interpret but to learn from such models and improve our understanding of remotely sensed signals of vegetation. Although CNN has not been around for long, it seems obvious that they will usher in a new era of vegetation remote sensing.

On September 27, 2020, a short and decisive war in the Caucasus erupted that provides a glimpse of wars to come. Azerbaijan and Armenia clashed in a conflict in rough, mountainous terrain that lasted 44 days and ended in Armenia’s surrender and Azerbaijan’s triumph. The battlespace was the area of Nagorno-Karabakh, the contested region between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The Azerbaijanis executed their version of cross-domain maneuver to win a rapid and decisive victory against a defending and determined adversary. To achieve this, the Azerbaijanis invested a reported $24B+ to upgrade their forces, purchasing the latest Turkish and Israeli Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and Loitering Munitions (LMs). The effective use by Azerbaijan of these weapons in the war was stunning. The unrelenting tempo, precision, and lethality of the Azerbaijani aerial top-attacks devastated and demoralized the Armenians and played a definitive role in Azerbaijan’s victory. These systems did not win the war by themselves, and UAVs have been over-hyped in many press accounts of the war, but the impact of the high-definition full-motion video (FMV) provided by top-attack systems categorized this conflict as “the war of the drones.” The Azerbaijanis used the secure FMV capabilities of their systems to enhance sensor-shooter integration, to obtain battle damage assessment, and for propaganda to win the information war. In these aspects, especially the use of secure tactical FMV video and data links, the conflict is a harbinger for wars to come.