Public Safety Implementation of Unmanned Aerial Systems for Photogrammetric Mapping of Crash Scenes

2019 ◽  
Vol 2673 (7) ◽  
pp. 567-574 ◽  
Author(s):  
John L. Bullock ◽  
Robert Hainje ◽  
Ayman Habib ◽  
Deborah Horton ◽  
Darcy M. Bullock
Keyword(s):  
Public Safety ◽  
Mean Squared Error ◽  
New Technology ◽  
Mass Casualty ◽  
Unmanned Aerial Systems ◽  
Paper Briefly ◽  
The Past ◽  
Squared Error ◽  
Aerial Systems ◽  
Terrestrial Photogrammetry

Terrestrial photogrammetry using acquired images by a hand-held camera has been used for several years to map crash scene geometry. More recently, photogrammetric reconstruction from acquired images by an unmanned aerial system (UAS) has been proposed for crash scene mapping. Over the past year, the Tippecanoe County Sherriff’s Office has participated in three workshops with Purdue University, applied these skills in two training mass casualty exercises, and independently mapped five crash scenes in June and July 2018. This paper briefly reviews the training sessions, mass casualty exercises, and five crash scenes mapped by Tippecanoe County Sherriff’s deputies. The paper presents a comparison of both traditional ground-based and UAS-based photogrammetric mapping for two crashes in July 2018. The UAS procedures described in this paper are quite similar to current ground-based photogrammetric mapping. The UAS-based photogrammetric mapping derived measurements from eight identified crash scene markers and key features were found to be within 0.29 ft of field tape measurements, or with 0.4% or less relative error and a root mean squared error of 0.12 ft. We believe this paper will become important documentation in the literature that will provide public safety agencies with performance data to support their deliberation in investing in this new technology.

Unmanned aerial vehicles can accurately, reliably, and economically compete with terrestrial mapping methods

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Orrin Thomas ◽  
Christian Stallings ◽  
Benjamin Wilkinson
Keyword(s):  
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles ◽  
Structure From Motion ◽  
Spatial Data ◽  
Mean Squared Error ◽  
Laser Scanner ◽  
Point Clouds ◽  
Unmanned Aerial Systems ◽  
Squared Error ◽  
Similar Accuracy ◽  
Aerial Systems

Structure from motion (SfM) and imagery-derived point clouds (IDPC) are excellent tools for collecting spatial data. However, reported accuracies from unmanned aerial systems (UAS) commonly fall short of their theoretical potential. The research presented here, using a DJI Inspire 2 with post-processed kinematic direct geopositioning, demonstrates that UAS mapping can be consistently accurate enough for use in place of, or in concert with, terrestrial methods (2 cm vertical root mean squared error). We further demonstrate that features that are missing or distorted in IDPC (e.g., roof edges, break lines, and above-ground utilities) can be collected from UAS-imagery stereo models with similar accuracy. Accuracy in the experiments was verified by comparison to data from a total station and terrestrial laser scanner (TLS). Use of the recommended hardware and stereo compilation reduced mapping costs by 40%–75% on three test projects.

Lessons from a DC10 Crash, American Airlines, Flight 191, Chicago, Illinois

1985 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-196 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank J. Baker ◽  
Jacek B. Franaszek
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
New Technology ◽  
Mass Casualty ◽  
Aircraft Accidents ◽  
Absolute Increase ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
Development And Utilization ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
New System

With the development and deployment of commercial jet aircraft in the mid 1950's, airline travel has become commonplace throughout the world. A rapid increase in the numbers of aircraft, airline routes, and flying time has occurred. New technology has added sophisticated and complicated gear to aircraft and their support systems. Every new system has the potential for failure and to some extent additional components increase the risk of technological breakdown. The increased chance of technological breakdown favors an increase in aircraft accidents. Fortunately, development and utilization of sophisticated redundant electronic and mechanical improvements aimed specifically at improving safety have also occurred. The results of these changes over the past twenty-five years has been a decreasing rate of accidents per mile flown. Due to the tremendous increase in flying, however, the absolute numbers of accidents associated passenger morbidity and mortality have risen (1). For the health care system, the major impact has resulted from the absolute increase in aircrash victims.Aircraft accidents have regularly produced mass casualty incidents with the number of victims ranging from a few to several hundred. Aircraft accidents can be divided into essentially four types: mid-air crashes (so called “hard impact”); crashes on takeoff; crashes on landing; and on-ground accidents (“soft impact”). Mid-air accidents are frequently away from population centers and usually there are no survivors. The medical impact therefore is minimal. Accidents occurring on takeoff, landing, and on the ground, occur at or close to airports, and the nature of the accident is such that there may be many victims (1).

Unmanned aerial system applications in construction: a systematic review

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 453-468 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shi Zhou ◽  
Masoud Gheisari
Keyword(s):  
Progress Monitoring ◽  
Unmanned Aerial Systems ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Past ◽  
Building Maintenance ◽  
Current State ◽  
Aerial Systems ◽  
Rotary Wing ◽  
Uas Applications

PurposeOver the past decade, researchers have used unmanned aerial systems (UASs) in construction industry for various applications from site inspection to safety monitoring or building maintenance. This paper aims to assort academic studies on construction UAS applications, summarize logics behind using UAS in each application and extend understanding of current state of UAS research in the construction setting.Design/methodology/approachThis research follows a systematic literature assessment methodology to summarize the results of 54 research papers over the past ten years and outlines the research trends for applying UASs in construction.FindingsUASs are used in building inspection, damage assessment, site surveying, safety inspection, progress monitoring, building maintenance and other construction applications. Cost saving, time efficiency and improved accessibility are the primary reasons for choosing UAS in construction applications. Rotary-wing UASs are the most common types of UASs being used in construction. Cameras, LiDAR and Kinect are the most common onboard sensors integrated in construction UAS applications. The control styles used are manual, semi-autonomous and autonomous.Originality/valueThis paper contributes to classification of UAS applications in construction research and identification of UAS hardware and sensor types as well as their flying control systems in construction literature.

The civil use of small unmanned aerial systems (sUASs): operational and safety challenges

2017 ◽  
Vol 89 (5) ◽  
pp. 703-708 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Novaro Mascarello ◽  
Fulvia Quagliotti
Keyword(s):  
Medical Equipment ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Unmanned Vehicles ◽  
Unmanned Aerial Systems ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Past ◽  
Military Applications ◽  
International Regulations ◽  
Emergency Scenarios ◽  
Aerial Systems

Purpose In the past decades, both civil and military applications of small unmanned aerial systems (sUASs) have been on the rise. The sUASs guarantee the performance of dangerous, dull, duly and dirty missions, according to the 4D rule. The purpose of this study is to describe, some ethical, operational and safety challenges occur owing to the use of sUASs at over-crowded areas or in emergency scenarios. After an overview of the current sUAS regulations, some strategic configuration elements will be analysed to improve these systems and to define safe and inoffensive sUASs. Nevertheless, some problems have not been completely overcome. Design/methodology/approach The unmanned vehicles are nowadays applied for different kinds of applications. Search and rescue (S&R) missions; terrain surveillance and monitoring after natural disasters, such as earthquakes and landslides; and transportation of medical equipment and cartography are some examples of the most renowned and important civil missions of sUAS. In all these scenarios, some challenges could be encountered. First, the use of sUASs could compromise the privacy of unaware citizens who are in the area of application. Moreover, even if the unmanned vehicle works according to national and international regulations, there are some hazards both for the ground operators and for the population, because these sUASs could impact the human body after a flight failure. Findings In this paper, current principal regulations will be analysed, identifying some differences and discrepancies among them. Moreover, some considerations about the configuration elements are introduced to define the safe use of sUASs. Nevertheless, the privacy challenge is quite complicated to be overcome definitely. Originality/value Considering some challenges related to the civil applications of sUASs, new unmanned configurations could be developed to guarantee safety and data protection of unaware people.

scholarly journals Cooperative Unmanned Aerial System Reconnaissance in a Complex Urban Environment and Uneven Terrain

Sensors ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (17) ◽  
pp. 3754 ◽  
Author(s):  
Petr Stodola ◽  
Jan Drozd ◽  
Jan Mazal ◽  
Jan Hodický ◽  
Dalibor Procházka
Keyword(s):  
Robotic Systems ◽  
Unmanned Aerial Systems ◽  
Military Operations ◽  
Complex Environment ◽  
Uneven Terrain ◽  
The Past ◽  
Area Of Interest ◽  
Minimum Number ◽  
New Formulation ◽  
Aerial Systems

Using unmanned robotic systems in military operations such as reconnaissance or surveillance, as well as in many civil applications, is common practice. In this article, the problem of monitoring the specified area of interest by a fleet of unmanned aerial systems is examined. The monitoring is planned via the Cooperative Aerial Model, which deploys a number of waypoints in the area; these waypoints are visited successively by unmanned systems. The original model proposed in the past assumed that the area to be explored is perfectly flat. A new formulation of this model is introduced in this article so that the model can be used in a complex environment with uneven terrain and/or with many obstacles, which may occlude some parts of the area of interest. The optimization algorithm based on the simulated annealing principles is proposed for positioning of waypoints to cover as large an area as possible. A set of scenarios has been designed to verify and evaluate the proposed approach. The key experiments are aimed at finding the minimum number of waypoints needed to explore at least the minimum requested portion of the area. Furthermore, the results are compared to the algorithm based on the lawnmower pattern.

scholarly journals Predicting fuel properties using chemometrics: a review and an extension to temperature dependent physical properties by using infrared spectroscopy to predict density

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zachariah Baird ◽  
Vahur Oja
Keyword(s):  
Alternative Fuels ◽  
Mean Squared Error ◽  
Fuel Properties ◽  
Fuel Quality ◽  
Chemometric Methods ◽  
Temperature Dependent ◽  
Quality Properties ◽  
The Past ◽  
Squared Error ◽  
Temperature Dependent Properties

Although the use of chemometric methods to predict fuel quality properties has received wide attention over the past three decades, as seen from the review included with thisarticle, no studies were found about predicting temperature dependent properties of fuels.Since our research is focused on determining thermodynamic properties, rather than qualityproperties, taking temperature dependencies into account became even more important. Todetermine if accurate predictions could be obtained over a range of temperatures, the densitiesof over 300 fuel samples (mostly narrow boiling range oil fractions, considered here aspseudocomponents) were measured and predicted. An alternative fuel (a phenol-rich oil shaleoil) was studied because the property prediction methods developed for conventionalpetroleum samples often give poor results for this and other alternative fuels. The temperaturedependence of density for these fuel samples was modelled using a linear equation based onthe density at 20 °C and the slope of the density-temperature relationship. Support vectorregression was used to predict these parameters for each sample from its infrared spectrum.Then these parameters were used to predict the densities at other temperatures. Densitiesspanned the range from 0.713 to 1.088 g/cm 3 , and the root mean squared error of the predictedvalues was 0.004660 g/cm 3 , which is a relative error of less than 1%. In addition to theexperimental portion, a literature review is included, which contains an assessment of theaccuracy of chemometric methods for predicting many fuel properties.

scholarly journals LOW-COST UAS PHOTOGRAMMETRY FOR ROAD INFRASTRUCTURES’ INSPECTION

2020 ◽  
Vol XLIII-B2-2020 ◽  
pp. 1145-1150
Author(s):  
L. Pinto ◽  
F. Bianchini ◽  
V. Nova ◽  
D. Passoni
Keyword(s):  
Low Cost ◽  
Laser Scanner ◽  
Unmanned Aerial Systems ◽  
Control Points ◽  
The Past ◽  
Ground Control Points ◽  
General Rules ◽  
Aerial Systems ◽  
Cloud Of Points ◽  
Non Destructive

Abstract. All over the world, road infrastructures are getting closer to their life cycle and need to be constantly inspected: a consistent number of bridges are structurally deficient, and the risk of collapse can no longer be excluded. In contrast with the past, the interest in structure durability has recently grown rapidly. In order to make bridges durable, it is necessary to carry out ordinary maintenance, preceded by inspection activities, which can be traditionally divided in two categories: destructive and non-destructive (NDT). All the NDT inspections (visual, IR thermography, GPR) can be conducted by using UAS (Unmanned Aerial Systems), a technology that makes bridges inspections quicker, cheaper, objective and repeatable. This study presents the visual inspection and survey of two bridges by using a UAS DJI Mavic 2 Pro, equipped with a 20Mpixel Hasselblad camera that records 60fps 4K video and a 10bit radiometric resolution. Starting from the acquired data, a 3D model of each structure was built by using Structure from Motion (SfM) principles and software. To validate the two models, each of them characterized by a centimetric accuracy, the UAS camera generated cloud of points and was co-registered with the point cloud of a terrestrial laser-scanner using Ground Control Points (GCPs). To make this, CloudCompare comparison software was used; the plugin M3C2 automatically calculates the distance between the points of two compared clouds. Finally, some general rules concerning the UAS main characteristics for inspection of bridges and software for data processing are proposed.

scholarly journals Maturity Levels of Public Safety Applications using Unmanned Aerial Systems: a Review

2021 ◽  
Vol 103 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Merlin Stampa ◽  
Andreas Sutorma ◽  
Uwe Jahn ◽  
Jörg Thiem ◽  
Carsten Wolff ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Safety ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Unmanned Aerial Systems ◽  
Environmental Complexity ◽  
The Public ◽  
Research Areas ◽  
Hoc Networks ◽  
Aerial Systems ◽  
Safety Applications

AbstractUnmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) are becoming increasingly popular in the public safety sector. While some applications have so far only been envisioned, others are regularly performed in real-life scenarios. Many more fall in between and are actively investigated by research and commercial communities alike. This study reviews the maturity levels, or “market-readiness”, of public safety applications for UAS. As individual assessments of all applications suggested in the literature are infeasible due to their sheer number, we propose a novel set of application categories: Remote Sensing, Mapping, Monitoring, Human-drone Interaction, Flying Ad-hoc Networks, Transportation, and Counter UAV Systems. Each category’s maturity is assessed through a literature review of contained applications, using the metric of Application Readiness Levels (ARLs). Relevant aspects such as the environmental complexity and available mission time of addressed scenarios are taken into account. Following the analysis, we infer that improvements in autonomy and software reliability are the most promising research areas for increasing the usefulness and acceptance of UAS in the public safety domain.

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