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Detecting Changes in Terrain Using Unmanned Aerial VehiclesIn recent years, small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been used for more than the thrill they bring to model airplane enthusiasts. Their flexibility and low cost have made them a viable option for low-altitude reconnaissance. In a recent effort, we acquired video data from a small UAV during several passes over the same flight path. The objective of the exercise was to determine if objects had been added to the terrain along the flight path between flight passes. Several issues accrue to this simple-sounding problem: (1) lighting variations may cause false detection of objects because of changes in shadow orientation and strength between passes; (2) variations in the flight path due to wind-speed, and heading change may cause misalignment of gross features making the task of detecting changes between the frames very difficult; and (3) changes in the aircraft orientation and altitude lead to a change in size of the features from frame-to-frame making a comparison difficult. In this paper, we discuss our efforts to perform this change detection, and the lessons that we learned from this exercise.
Document ID
20070020203
Acquisition Source
Langley Research Center
Document Type
Conference Paper
External Source(s)
Authors
Rahman, Zia-ur
(College of William and Mary Williamsburg, VA, United States)
Hines, Glenn D.
(NASA Langley Research Center Hampton, VA, United States)
Logan, Michael J.
(NASA Langley Research Center Hampton, VA, United States)
Date Acquired
August 23, 2013
Publication Date
May 25, 2005
Publication Information
Publication: Proceedings of SPIE
Volume: 5817
ISBN: 9.78E+12
Subject Category
Instrumentation And Photography
Meeting Information
Meeting: Visual Information Processing XIV
Location: Orlando, FL
Country: United States
Start Date: March 29, 2005
End Date: March 30, 2005
Sponsors: International Society for Optical Engineering
Funding Number(s)
CONTRACT_GRANT: NNL04AA02A
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Other

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