The Application of Hough Transform and Canny Edge Detector Methods for the Visual Detection of Cumuliform Clouds.

Aleksandr Lapušinskij,Gintautas Stankūnavičius,Nikolaj Goranin,Simona Ramanauskaitė,Ivan Suzdalev,Justinas Janulevičius

doi:10.3390/s21175821

Aleksandr Lapušinskij, Gintautas Stankūnavičius + Show 4 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/s21175821

Copy DOI

Abstract

The increase in flying time of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) is a relevant and difficult task for UAV designers. It is especially important in such tasks as monitoring, mapping, or signal retranslation. While the majority of research is concentrated on increasing the battery capacity, it is also important to utilize natural renewable energy sources, such as solar energy, thermals, etc. This article proposed a method for the automatic recognition of cumuliform clouds. Practical application of this method allows diverting of an unmanned aerial vehicle towards the identified cumuliform cloud and improving its probability of flying into a thermal flow, thus increasing the flight time of the UAV, as is performed by glider and paraglider pilots. The proposed method is based on the application of Hough transform and Canny edge detector methods, which have not been used for such a task before. For testing the proposed method a dataset of different clouds was generated and marked by experts. The achieved average accuracy of 87% on the unbalanced dataset demonstrates the practical applicability of the proposed method for detecting thermals related to cumuliform clouds. The article also provides the concept of VilniusTech developed UAV, implementing the proposed method.

Highlights

This century has shown a significant improvement in autonomous aircraft control systems, bringing forth numerous studies on the design and application of autonomous aircraft in various scientific fields [1]
Autonomous aircraft flight in thermals occurs only incidentally as an aircraft inadvertently flies into a thermal flow [4]
The dataset was composed of situations, when autonomous soaring is possible, as the method is dedicated to detecting cumuliform clouds during gliding

Summary

Introduction

This century has shown a significant improvement in autonomous aircraft control systems, bringing forth numerous studies on the design and application of autonomous aircraft in various scientific fields [1]. The ability to fly without using its own energy resources is important for gliders, paragliders, and autonomous aircraft. Renewable energy resources, such as solar power and meteorological phenomena, such as thermals, permit to remain aloft longer, improving the efficiency as a result. The use of thermal flows with regard to autonomous aircraft flights is investigated already [2,3]. The reason for the meteorological condition is favorable for thermal flows and heat convection, as well as uneven heating of the Earth’s surface. The result of the thermals is cumuliform convective clouds. Autonomous aircraft flight in thermals occurs only incidentally as an aircraft inadvertently flies into a thermal flow [4]. The recognition and analysis of cumuliform clouds as they are growing is a reliable way to identify thermals

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion