Drones and Privacy

Drones, also referred to as UAV's (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle), are an aircraft without a human pilot. Drones have been used by various military organisations for over a decade, but in recent years drones a have been emerging more and more in commercial and recreational capacity. The paper is aimed at drone and UAV technology capabilities and how they could and are currently effecting privacy laws globally in comparison to those currently in the Rep. of Ireland. Being investigated is the collection, retention and purpose of which civilian's information is being gathered. The authors also discuss the laws preventing the development and evolution of drone technology in the US in comparison to the Rep. of Ireland.

Autonomous Systems in a Military Context (Part 2)

This is the second paper of two on the role of autonomy in the unmanned systems revolution currently underway and affecting military forces around the globe. In the last paper, the authors considered the implications of autonomy on the legal obligations of military forces and their ability to meet these obligations, primarily through a survey of the domestic law of a number of drone wielding nations and relevant international legal regimes, including the law of armed conflict, arms control law, international human rights law, and others. However, the impact of autonomy in the military context extends well beyond the law and also encompasses philosophy and morality. Therefore, this paper addresses perennial problems concerning autonomous systems and their impact on what justifies the initial resort to war, who may be legitimately targeted in warfare, the collateral effects of military weaponry and the methods of determining and dealing with violations of the laws of just war theory.

Dynamic Modeling and Control Techniques for a Quadrotor

This chapter presents the detailed dynamic model of a Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) type Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) known as the quadrotor. The mathematical model is derived based on Newton Euler formalism. This is followed by the development of a simulation environment on which the developed model is verified. Four control algorithms are developed to control the quadrotor's degrees of freedom: a linear PID controller, Gain Scheduling-based PID controller, nonlinear Sliding Mode, and Backstepping controllers. The performances of these controllers are compared through the developed simulation environment in terms of their dynamic performance, stability, and the effect of possible disturbances.

War 2.0

Technology has always allowed agents of war to separate themselves from the harm that they or their armed forces inflict, with spears, bows and arrows, trebuchets, cannons, firearms and other modern weaponry, all serving as examples of technologies that have increased the distance between belligerents and supposedly made warfare less sickening than the close-quarters combat of the past. However, this paper calls into question the extent to which new military technologies actually mitigate the savagery of war. It contends that with the introduction of technologies that eliminate the need for a human presence on the battlefield, we are the cusp of a major revolution in warfare that presents new challenges and questions for military technoethics, namely as to how soldiers should conduct themselves and fight justly, if they are to do so at all. Ultimately, it argues that only way to address these issues is through the design of the mediating technologies themselves, which is by no means an easy task.

Drone Warfare

The United States is now relying on Reaper and Predator drone strikes as its primary strategy in the continuing War on Terrorism. This paper argues for the rational scrutiny drone warfare has yet to receive. It is argued that drone warfare is immoral as it fails both the jus in bello and the jus ad bellum conditions of Just War theory. Drone warfare cannot be accepted on utilitarian grounds either, as it is very probable that terrorists will acquire drones capable of lethal strikes and deploy them against defenseless civilians. Moreover, by examining the psychological bases for reliance on drone warfare, as well as the message the United States is sending adversaries, we need to be concerned that, rather than reduce the likelihood of terrorists strikes, the U.S. reliance on drones strikes threatens to institutionalize terrorism as the status quo for the foreseeable future.

A Practical UAV Remote Sensing Methodology to Generate Multispectral Orthophotos for Vineyards

This paper explores the use of compact digital cameras to remotely estimate spectral reflectance based on unmanned aerial vehicle imagery. Two digital cameras, one unaltered and one altered, were used to collect four bands of spectral information (blue, green, red, and near-infrared [NIR]). The altered camera had its internal hot mirror removed to allow the sensor to be additionally sensitive to NIR. Through on-ground experimentation with spectral targets and a spectroradiometer, the sensitivity and abilities of the cameras were observed. This information along with on-site collected spectral data were used to aid in converting aerial imagery digital numbers to estimates of scaled surface reflectance using the empirical line method. The resulting images were used to create spectrally-consistent orthophotomosaics of a vineyard study site. Individual bands were subsequently validated with in situ spectroradiometer data. Results show that red and NIR bands exhibited the best fit (R2: 0.78 for red; 0.57 for NIR).

Compute-Efficient Geo-Localization of Targets From UAV Videos

Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAVs) have crucial roles to play in traditional warfare, asymmetric conflicts, and also civilian applications such as search and rescue operations. Though satellites provide extensive coverage and capabilities crucial to many remote sensing tasks, UAVs have distinct edge over satellites in dynamic situations due to shorter revisit times and desired area/time coverage. The course, speed and altitude of a UAV can be dynamically altered, details of an activity of interest monitored by loitering over the area as desired. A fundamental requirement in most UAV operations is to find geo-coordinates of an object in the captured image. Most small, low-cost UAVs use low-cost, less accurate sensors. Matching with pre-registered images may not be possible in areas with low details or in emergency situations where terrain may have undergone severe sudden changes. In these situations that demand near real-time results and wider coverage, it is often enough to provide approximate results as long as bounds on accuracies can be established. Even when image registration is possible, it can benefit from these bounds to reduce search space thereby saving execution time. The prime contributions of this paper are computation of location of target anywhere in the image even at larger slant ranges, optimized algorithm to compute terrain elevation at target point, and use of visual simulation tool to validate the model. Analysis from simulation and results from real UAV flights are presented.

Skin Detection With Small Unmanned Aerial Systems by Integration of Area Scan Multispectral Imagers and Factors Affecting Their Design and Operation

Dismount skin detection from an aerial platform has posed challenges compared to ground-based platforms. A small, area scanning multispectral imager was constructed and tested on a Small Unmanned Aerial System (SUAS). Computer vision registration, stereo camera calibration, and geolocation from autopilot telemetry were utilized to design a dismount detection platform. The test expedient prototype was 2kg and exhibited skin detection performance similar to a larger line scan hyperspectral imager (HSI). Outdoor tests with a line scan HSI and the prototype resulted in an average 5.112% difference in Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) Area Under Curve (AUC). This research indicated that SUAS-based Spectral Imagers are capable tools in dismount detection protocols.

Applications of Decision-Support Systems in Sociotechnical Systems

In this chapter, the authors present conceptual models of decision support systems (DSS) and Expert systems (ES) for Human-Operator (H-O) of Air Navigation System (ANS), such as air traffic controller (ATC) in flight emergencies, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) operator, Safety Management System (SMS), etc. The authors made an analysis of the International civil aviation organization (ICAO) documents on risk assessment and the impact of the social environment on the aviation system. Automated system of pre-flight information preparation with intelligent module for support the decision making (DM) about aircraft departure are presented and program realization of systems are shown. The authors obtained algorithm of determining the optimal aerodrome for the forced landing of aircraft is provided. Expert systems of aviation enterprise's estimation were developed. Inhomogeneous factors of internal and external management environment of aviation enterprise were generalized using set-theoretical approach. This gave possibilities to define that the level of safety of aviation activity has the greatest influence among factors of internal environment and global economic situation – among factors of external environment. The authors demonstrate some interesting applications of DM in Socio-Technical Systems (STS). The DSS for H-O of ANS in the emergency situational were developed. Examples of DSS: DSS of ATC in the emergency situational; the flight dispatcher's DSS; DSS of UAV's operator, etc. In addition, the chapter presents some cases of DSS developed by the authors and colleagues at National Aviation University, Ukraine.

Intelligent Fighter Pilot Support for Distributed Unmanned and Manned Decision Making

This chapter highlights important aspects of an intelligent fighter pilot support for distributed unmanned and manned decision making. First the background is described including current trends within the domain, and characteristics of a decision support system are discussed. After that a scenario and example situations are presented. The chapter also includes reflections of an intelligent fighter pilot support for distributed unmanned and manned decision making from the joint cognitive systems view, regarding human interoperability, and function allocation.