A number of critical infrastructures, such as gas or oil pipelines operate in a sensitive environment and any damage done to the infrastructure significantly harms the surrounding fauna and flora and poisons water supplies. The infrastructure thus needs to be monitored and any damage or failure has to be detected and reported as quickly as possible. We focus on the enhancement of the monitoring...

This thesis presents an approach to near-optimal target localization for small and micro unmanned aerial vehicles using a family of pre-computed parameterized trajectories. These trajectories are pre-computed for a set of nominal target locations uniformly distributed over the sensor field of view and stored offline in a non-dimensionalized form. In the first part of this research, the trajecto...

Precision Farming (PF) management strategies are commonly based on estimations of within-field yield potential, often derived from remotely-sensed products, e.g., Vegetation Index (VI) maps. These well-established means, however, lack important information, like crop height. Combinations of VI-maps and detailed 3D Crop Surface Models (CSMs) enable advanced methods for crop yield prediction. Thi...

The authors would like to correct Figure 13 and Table A2, as well as the text related to the data presented in both of them, as indicated below, considering that an error in the calculations involving Equation (2), described in the Section 2.8 of the Materials and Methods Section, resulted in the communication of incorrect values [...].

This paper presents a fast method to evaluate the accuracy of a calibration method of a stereovision rig built with commercially available cameras. The method allows by retro projection to quantify very precisely errors in terms of depth reconstruction. The proposed method has been evaluated on the depth reconstruction of real scenes from images taken with an unmanned aerial vehicle.

The availability of new information can often necessitate rerouting of a vehicle. In [1], the set of nonoverlapping useful vicinities of the reconnaissance sites, S, and the 3D space over them was represented using a discrete graph-model. Here, we consider two cases in which an unmanned reconnaissance aerial vehicle must be rerouted. The first scenario involves not visiting useful vicinities, S...

We use Sarnoff’s VFE-200 next-generation video processor to demonstrate real-time algorithms for camera fixation, mosaic construction, and moving object detection and tracking from a moving camera. The algorithms are all derived from our ability to perform real-time image alignment. These capabilities are currently being used in several unmanned aerial and ground surveillance programs.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) collaboratively play central roles in intelligence gathering and control in urban/border surveillance and crowd control. In this paper, we first propose a comprehensive planning and control framework based on dynamic-data-driven, adaptive multi-scale simulation (DDDAMS). We then discuss proposed algorithms enabling DDDAMS capab...

The aim of this Project is to complete a first study of Active Noise Cancellation systems applicability to Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. The main motivation to this research is the EASA request to minimize noise from UAVs in populated areas, besides all other possible applications. At first, a brief introduction to the issue and ANC systems is made. Then, a physical model of propellers soundwaves i...