Automatic Detection of Roads using Aerial Photographs and Calculation of the Optimal Overflight Route for a Fixed-wing Drone

Abstract

Currently, fixed-wing drones have become indispensable tools for the surveillance of large areas of land, justified by their better cost/benefit ratio, great flight autonomy, and payload capacity. In particular, the identification of roads, traffic control, monitoring of wear on asphalt layers, risk identification, and safety improvement are applications that are being implemented in these unmanned aerial vehicles. Tracking a road requires systems capable of detecting artificial marks through images employing aerial photographs that allow the implementation of optimal overflight routes. This research work presents a solution to the problem of road tracking from aerial photographs and implements an image processing algorithm and morphological techniques that calculate and traces the ideal route for the drone to track automatically, regardless of its orientation and the type of road.