Emergency Support Unmanned Aerial Vehicle for Forest Fire Surveillance

Abdulla Al-Kaff,David Martín,Fernando García,Arturo De La Escalera,Sergio Campos,Ángel Madridano

doi:10.3390/electronics9020260

Abdulla Al-Kaff, David Martín + Show 4 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics9020260

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Journal: Electronics	Publication Date: Feb 4, 2020
Citations: 24	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Carlos III University of Madrid

Abstract

The advances in autonomous technologies and microelectronics have increased the use of Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in more critical applications, such as forest fire monitoring and fighting. In addition, implementing surveillance methods that provide rich information about the fires is considered a great tool for Emergency Response Teams (ERT). From this aspect and in collaboration with Telefónica Digital España, Dronitec S.L, and Divisek Systems, this paper presents a fire monitoring system based on perception algorithms, implemented on a UAV, to perform surveillance tasks allowing the monitoring of a specific area, in which several algorithms have been implemented to perform the tasks of autonomous take-off/landing, trajectory planning, and fire monitoring. This UAV is equipped with RGB and thermal cameras, temperature sensors, and communication modules in order to provide full information about the fire and the UAV itself, sending these data to the ground station in real time. The presented work is validated by performing several flights in a real environment, and the obtained results show the efficiency and the robustness of the proposed system, against different weather conditions.

Highlights

The field of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) has been given great focus in many applications, and this is due to the advances in the field of microelectronics, which have allowed improving certain characteristics, such as weight, endurance, and payload
The UAV could fly in these conditions, its usefulness was reduced since the on-board cameras would not be able to transmit useful information about the fire
(a) Sensors temperature (b) Images captured with fog (c) Images captured with fog Figure 12 shows an example of the data obtained from the experiment, where Figure 12a illustrates the temperature information about the UAV, whilst Figure 12b and Figure 12c demonstrate the color and thermal images, respectively, in dense foggy conditions

Summary

Introduction

The field of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) has been given great focus in many applications, and this is due to the advances in the field of microelectronics, which have allowed improving certain characteristics, such as weight, endurance, and payload. Through the use of different sensors on board, studies and analyses of a wide range of environments can be carried out, helping to reduce costs and personal risks and monitor hard-to-reach areas effectively [4]. This set of features results in UAVs having a high impact in the field of fighting fires, which have a high economic, social, and environmental cost in most places of the world.

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Conclusion