Eristalis Research Articles

Universal path planning for an indoor drone

Abstract During the construction and maintenance of building, universal path planning for an indoor drone navigation is needed. There are many two-dimensional (2D) path planning methods, but they are not appropriate for a three-dimensional (3D) indoor environment with many obstacles in it. In this study, we present a novel approach to plan universal paths for drones in a known indoor environment using a voxel model. This approach can make the drone fly at some distance from the obstacles by computing a 3D buffer around the obstacles, using our algorithm 3D propagating approximate Euclidean distance transformation (3D PAEDT). Two types of paths are presented using A* and distance transformation algorithms: safe shortest path (SSP) and safe least cost path (SLCP). Both paths ensure that the drone maintains a minimal distance from the obstacles. SLCP ensures that the drone flies at a fixed height. Several experiments are conducted to test the approach in a two-story building.

PLC-Integrated Sensing Technology in Mountain Regions for Drone Landing Sites: Focusing on Software Technology.

In the Republic of Korea, one of the most widely discussed subjects related to future logistics technology is the drone-based delivery (transportation) system. Much (around 75%) of Korea’s territory consists of mountainous areas; however, the costs of installing internet facilities for drone landing sites are very high compared to other countries. Therefore, this paper proposes the power-line communication (PLC) system introduced in the author’s previous study as an alternative solution. For the system design, a number of lightning rods are used together with a monitoring system. The system algorithm performs substantial data analysis. Also, as the author found that instantaneous high-voltage currents were a major cause of fire incidents, a three-phase three-wire connection was used for the installation of the lightning rods (Bipolar Conventional Air Terminal). Thus, based on the PLC technology, an artificial intelligence (AI) which avoids lightning strikes at the drone landing site by interworking with a closed-circuit television (CCTV) monitoring system when a drone flies over the mountain regions is proposed in this paper. The algorithm was implemented with C++ and Unity/C#, whereas the application for the part concerning the integrated sensing was developed with Java Android.

Urban Lawn Monitoring in Smart City Environments

Control over water usage for irrigation purposes is a key factor in order to achieve the sustainability in agriculture. The irrigation of urban lawns represents a high percentage of the urban water usage. The use of information and communication technology (ICT) offers the possibility of monitoring the grass state in order to adjust the irrigation regime. In this paper, we propose an Arduino-based system with a camera set on a drone. The drone flies along the garden taking pictures of the grass. Those pictures are processed with a rule-based algorithm that classifies them according to the grass quality. Pictures can be tagged in three categories: high coverage, low coverage, or very low coverage. After designing our algorithm, twelve pictures are used to verify its correct operation. The results show a 100% hit rate. To analyze the suitability of using drones to perform this task, we carried out a comparative study for gardens with different sizes, where the drone and a similar system mounted on a small autonomous vehicle have been used. The results show that, for gardens bigger than 1000 m2, the use of drone is needed due to the time consumed by the vehicle to cover the entire surface. Finally, we show the results of sending the image information after processing it in different manners.

Military manga [Resources_Geek Life

It first glance, Dark Hammer looks a lot like any other science fiction comic book: On the front cover, a drone flies over a river dividing a city with damaged and burning buildings. But this short story in graphic form comes from the Army Cyber Institute at West Point, in New York. The ACI was set up to research cyber challenges, and it acts as a bridge between different defense and intelligence agencies and academic and industry circles.

Drones in Construction

Drones are a quick and cost friendly option for construction companies wanting to increase productivity and efficiency in their day-to-day operations. With increased technological capabilities and newfound affordability, drones are rapidly influencing commercial industries; but regulations found in 14 C.R.F. § 107 must be relaxed before drones can provide both true efficiency in the construction industry and significantly impact the economy. Drones fly above a construction site, gathering images and collecting data that can be used to reduce the risk of personal accident, reconstruct work schedules, and identify construction defects. While drones provide inherent benefit to the construction industry, inexperienced operators, faulty mechanics, and limited insurance policies combine to create some risk. However, this risk does not outweigh the benefit that drones provide.

Multi-Object Tracking by Flying Cameras Based on a Forward-Backward Interaction

The automatic analysis of images acquired by cameras mounted on board of drones (flying cameras) is attracting many scientists working in the field of computer vision; the interest is related to the increasing need of algorithms able to understand the scenes acquired by flying cameras, by detecting the moving objects, calculating their trajectories, and finally understanding their activities. The problem is made challenging by the fact that, in the most general case, the drone flies without any awareness of the environment; thus, no initial set-up configuration based on the appearance of the area of interest can be used for simplifying the task, as it generally happens when working with fixed cameras. Moreover, the apparent movements of the objects in the images are superimposed to that generated by the camera, associated with the flight of the drone (varying in the altitude, speed, and the angles of yaw and pitch). Finally, it has to be considered that the algorithm should involve simple visual computational models as the drone can only host embedded computers having limited computing resources. This paper proposes a detection and tracking algorithm based on a novel paradigm suitably combining a forward tracking based on local data association with a backward chain, aimed at automatically tuning the operating parameters frame by frame, so as to be totally independent on the visual appearance of the flying area. This also definitively drops any time-consuming manual configuration procedure by a human operator. Although the method is self-configured and requires low-computational resources, its accuracy on a wide data set of real videos demonstrates its applicability in real contexts, even running over embedded platforms. Experimental results are given on a set of 53 videos and more than 60 000 frames.

Secure system based on UAV and BLE for improving SAR missions

This work describes an integrated solution to face a civil security problem in the area of Search And Rescue (SAR) of missing people. This proposal is based on the use of emerging technologies such as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), also known as drones, and the use of simulated beacons on smartphones. In particular, in the presented tool, drones fly synchronously in a specific area so that each drone uses on-board sensors to scan and detect any signal emitted by Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons from smartphones of missing people. This technique allows getting the GPS position of any detected missing person. This work also includes some security issues related to possible attacks focused on the perimeter and physical security.

Person identification from aerial footage by a remote-controlled drone

Remote-controlled aerial drones (or unmanned aerial vehicles; UAVs) are employed for surveillance by the military and police, which suggests that drone-captured footage might provide sufficient information for person identification. This study demonstrates that person identification from drone-captured images is poor when targets are unfamiliar (Experiment 1), when targets are familiar and the number of possible identities is restricted by context (Experiment 2), and when moving footage is employed (Experiment 3). Person information such as sex, race and age is also difficult to access from drone-captured footage (Experiment 4). These findings suggest that such footage provides a particularly poor medium for person identification. This is likely to reflect the sub-optimal quality of such footage, which is subject to factors such as the height and velocity at which drones fly, viewing distance, unfavourable vantage points, and ambient conditions.

MAPPING GNSS RESTRICTED ENVIRONMENTS WITH A DRONE TANDEM AND INDIRECT POSITION CONTROL

Abstract. The problem of autonomously mapping highly cluttered environments, such as urban and natural canyons, is intractable with the current UAV technology. The reason lies in the absence or unreliability of GNSS signals due to partial sky occlusion or multi-path effects. High quality carrier-phase observations are also required in efficient mapping paradigms, such as Assisted Aerial Triangulation, to achieve high ground accuracy without the need of dense networks of ground control points. In this work we consider a drone tandem in which the first drone flies outside the canyon, where GNSS constellation is ideal, visually tracks the second drone and provides an indirect position control for it. This enables both autonomous guidance and accurate mapping of GNSS restricted environments without the need of ground control points. We address the technical feasibility of this concept considering preliminary real-world experiments in comparable conditions and we perform a mapping accuracy prediction based on a simulation scenario.

Fast and safe gas detection from underground coal fire by drone fly over

Underground coal fires start naturally or as a result of human activities. Besides burning away the important non-renewable energy resource and causing financial losses, burning coal seams emit carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, sulfur oxide and methane, and is a leading cause of smog, acid rain, global warming, and air toxins. In the U.S. alone, the combined cost of coal-fire remediation projects that have been completed, budgeted, or projected by the U.S. Department of the Interior's Office of Surface Mining Remediation and Enforcement (OSM), exceeds $1 billion. It is estimated that these fires generate as much as 3% of the world's annual carbon dioxide emissions and consume as much as 5% of its minable coal. Considering the magnitude of environmental impact and economic loss caused by burning underground coal seams, we have developed a new, safe, reliable surface measurement of coal fire gases to assess the nature of underground coal fires. We use a drone mounted with gas sensors. Drone collected gas concentration data provides a safe alternative for evaluating the rank of a burning coal seam. In this study, a new method of determining coal rank by gas ratios is developed. Coal rank is valuable for defining parameters of a coal seam such as burn temperature, burn rate, and volume of burning seam.

Identification of Nanopillars on the Cuticle of the Aquatic Larvae of the Drone Fly (Diptera: Syrphidae).

Here, we describe a nano-scale surface structure on the rat-tailed maggot, the aquatic larva of the Drone fly Eristalis tenax (L.). Larvae of this syrphid hover fly live in stagnant, anaerobic water-courses that are rich in organic matter. The larvae burrow into fetid slurry and feed on microorganisms which they filter out from the organic material. This environment is rich in bacteria, fungi and algae with the capacity to form biofilms that might develop on the larval surface and harm them. Using transmission and scanning electron microscopy we have identified an array of slender (typically < 100 nm in diameter) nanopillars that cover the surface of the larvae. The high density and dimensions of these spine-like projections appear to make it difficult for bacteria to colonize the surface of the animal. This may interfere with the formation of biofilms and potentially act as a defence against bacterial infection.

Drone flies abortion pills to Northern Ireland to highlight its abortion laws

Drone flies abortion pills to Northern Ireland to highlight its abortion laws

Dynamic flight stability of a model dronefly in hovering and forward flight

Dynamic flight stability of a model dronefly in hovering and forward flight

Shift in phenotypic variation coupled with rapid loss of genetic diversity in captive populations of Eristalis tenax (Diptera: Syrphidae): consequences for rearing and potential commercial use.

Because of its importance as a pollinator and its potential economic usefulness for the biodegradation of organic animal waste, the genetic and phenotypic diversity of the drone fly, Eristalis tenax L. (Diptera: Syrphidae), was studied in both wild and captive populations from southeastern Europe. Wild specimens from a natural protected habitat (with low human impact), field crop habitat (semisynanthropic condition), and intensive pig farming habitat (synanthropic condition) were compared with a laboratory colony reared on artificial media An integrative approach was applied based on allozyme loci, cytochrome c oxidase I mitochondrial DNA, wing traits (size and shape), and abdominal color patterns. Our results indicate that the fourth and eighth generations of the laboratory colony show a severe lack of genetic diversity compared with natural populations. Reduced genetic diversity in subsequent generations (F4 and F8) of the laboratory colony was found to be linked with phenotypic divergence. Loss of genetic variability associated with phenotypic differentiation in laboratory samples suggests a founder effect, followed by stochastic genetic processes and inbreeding. Hence, our results have implications for captive bred Eristalis flies, which have been used in crop pollination and biodegradation of organic waste under synanthropic conditions.

Gastrointestinal symptoms resembling ulcerative proctitis caused by larvae of the drone fly Eristalis tenax

We report a case of facultative intestinal myiasis due to larvae of the drone fly Eristalis tenax, also named the rat-tailed maggots. The development of larvae in the lower bowel was responsible for non-specific gastrointestinal symptoms that resembled ulcerative proctitis. The diagnosis was established upon the observation of four spontaneously excreted mobile larvae. The definite identification of the E. tenax species was made possible by scanning electron microscopy. The clinical outcome was satisfactory.

Landscape genetics and wing morphometrics show a lack of structuring across island and coastal populations of the drone fly in theMediterranean

AbstractTheMediterranean basin is a region of species richness, rarity and endemism, and is thus an area of significant conservation importance. Conservation of insect biodiversity benefits pollination services in the fragmentedMediterranean landscape. However, the question of the distribution patterns of an important long‐distance pollen disperser, the hoverflyEristalis tenax(Diptera,Syrphidae), remains open. Therefore, we explored the spatial distribution of genetic and phenotypic diversity of this species across theCentral‐EasternMediterranean. Connectivity between continental and island populations ofE. tenaxwas studied by integrating molecular (allozyme loci and mitochondrialDNAsequences of the cytochromecoxidase subunit I gene) and phenotypic data (wing geometric morphometrics). Allozyme (FSTvalues,STRUCTUREanalysis, analysis of molecular variance) and phenotypic data (wing shape) and landscape genetics (Alleles in Space analysis) suggest thatE. tenaxpopulations within theMediterranean are largely connected, and that there is an absence of large‐scale geographic structuring. Intraspecific variability was only 1.54% among samples, and theMediterranean populations showed an almost complete lack ofCOI mtDNAhaplotype diversity. Thus, our results suggest thatE. tenaxpopulations are well mixed, and that a considerable amount of gene flow takes place, even among populations that are a great distance apart. AsE. tenax's ecological amplitude is wide, and the species is therefore widespread in both natural and man‐made landscapes, it probably maintains a high level of population similarity by its large population sizes (as revealed by theθparameter) and constant intermixing among populations. From an applied point of view, large‐scale species intermixing enables pollen spread across distant island plant populations, especially those threatened by extinction.

SEM studies on immature stages of the drone flies (diptera, syrphidae): Eristalis similis (Fallen, 1817) and Eristalis tenax (Linnaeus, 1758)

Adult drone flies (Syrphidae: Eristalis spp.) resemble male honeybees in appearance. Their immature stages are commonly known as rat-tailed maggots due to the presence of a very long anal segment and a telescopic breathing tube. The larvae are associated with decaying organic material in liquid or semi-liquid media, as in the case of other saprophagous eristalines. Biological and morphological data were obtained from both laboratory cultures and sampling in the field. Drone flies are important pollinators for wild flowers and crops. In fact, mass rearing protocols of Eristalis species are being developed to be used as efficient alternative pollinators. However, deeper knowledge of larval morphology and biology is required to improve artificial rearing. The production quality control of artificial rearing must manage the consistency and reliability of the production output avoiding, for example contamination with similar species. This article presents the first description of the larva and puparium of E. similis, including a comparative morphological study of preimaginal stages of the anthropophilic and ubiquitous European hoverfly species E. tenax. Scanning electron microscopy has been used for the first time to describe larvae and puparia of both species. Moreover, the preimaginal morphology of E. similis has been compared with all known descriptions of the genus Eristalis. The main diagnostic characters of the preimaginal stages of E. similis are the morphology of the anterior spiracles (shape of clear area and arrangement of facets) and pupal spiracles (length, shape, and arrangement of tubercles).

Stabilization control of a hovering model insect: lateral motion

Our previous study shows that the lateral distur- bance motion of a model drone fly does not have inherent stability (passive stability), because of the existence of an un- stable divergence mode. But drone flies are observed to fly stably. Constantly active control must be applied to stabilize the flight. In this study, we investigate the lateral stabiliza- tion control of the model drone fly. The method of compu- tational fluid dynamics is used to compute the lateral control derivatives and the techniques of eigenvalue and eigenvector analysis and modal decomposition are used for solving the equations of motion. Controllability analysis shows that al- though inherently unstable, the lateral disturbance motion is controllable. By feeding back the state variables (i.e. lateral translation velocity, yaw rate, roll rate and roll angle, which can be measured by the sensory system of the insect) to pro- duce anti-symmetrical changes in stroke amplitude and/or in angle of attack between the left and right wings, the motion can be stabilized, explaining why the drone flies can fl ys ta- bly even if the flight is passively unstable.

Temporal patterns of genetic and phenotypic variation in the epidemiologically important drone fly, Eristalis tenax

Eristalis tenax L. (Diptera: Syrphidae) is commonly known as the drone fly (adult) or rat-tailed maggot (immature). Both adults and immature stages are identified as potential mechanical vectors of mycobacterial pathogens, and early-stage maggots cause accidental myiasis. We compared four samples from Mount Fruška Gora, Serbia, with the aim of obtaining insights into the temporal variations and sexual dimorphism in the species. This integrative approach was based on allozyme loci, morphometric wing parameters (shape and size) and abdominal colour patterns. Consistent sexual dimorphism was observed, indicating that male specimens had lighter abdomens and smaller and narrower wings than females. The distribution of genetic diversity at polymorphic loci indicated genetic divergence among collection dates. Landmark-based geometric morphometrics revealed, contrary to the lack of divergence in wing size, significant wing shape variation throughout the year. In addition, temporal changes in the frequencies of the abdominal patterns observed are likely to relate to the biology of the species and ecological factors in the locality. Hence, the present study expands our knowledge of the genetic diversity and phenotypic plasticity of E. tenax. The quantification of such variability represents a step towards the evaluation of the adaptive potential of this species of medical and epidemiological importance.

The CIA's Covert Predator Drone War in Pakistan, 2004–2010: The History of an Assassination Campaign

This article provides the first overview of the CIA's secret drone campaign against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan's tribal areas from its origins in 2001's Operation Enduring Freedom to the end of 2010. In the process it addresses the spatial dimensions of the campaign (where are the strikes being directed and where do the drones fly from), Pakistani reactions to this threat to both their sovereignty and an internal Taliban enemy, technological developments and Taliban and Al Qaeda responses to this unprecedented airborne assassination campaign. While the debate on this issue has often been driven by the extremes which either support the campaign as the most effective tool in killing terrorists or condemn it for driving Pakistanis to new levels of anti-Americanism, this article points out a third path. Namely, that many Pakistani Pashtun tribesmen living in the targeted areas support the strikes against the Taliban who have terrorized them in recent years.