STTR Phase I: Subcanopy 3D forest mapping by uncrewed aerial vehicle

这个小企业技术转让（STTR）第一阶段项目的更广泛/商业影响是帮助减轻美国西部野火危机的工具。规定的燃烧是防止不受控制的大规模野火的最有效方法之一，这些野火破坏整个生态系统，社区和经济，但由于机构负担过重，燃烧所需的环境评估可能会延迟数月或数年。这项创新通过自动化调查解决方案解决了这一痛点，减少了文书工作的负担，也减少了烧伤地区植被制图和空间火灾建模的潜在错误。该解决方案确保规定的燃烧计划使用最佳可用植被数据，为火灾管理人员提供对预期火灾行为的准确预测，以确定控制策略，人员配备和资源。这一创新将是第一个使用自主无人机（UAV）的自动规定燃烧空间火灾建模解决方案。这项创新符合STTR计划对未经证实的高影响力创新的关注，因为无人机的亚冠层测绘是自主飞行的前沿应用，在优化和决策方面存在挑战。将无人机技术应用于规定的燃烧环境评估将有助于解决美国日益严重的野火危机，减少在选定地点燃烧的决定和执行燃烧之间的延迟。拟议项目要解决的技术障碍包括实时，子冠层3D映射和优化传感器要求的约束，杂乱的环境探索和SWAP（尺寸，重量和功率）限制。我们的目标是产生一个高保真的，开源的。无人机探索环境，在满足无人机有效载荷要求的资源有限的计算机上实现3D映射，将物种特定的决策标准纳入无人机探索算法，并进行验证测试以验证技术和早期商业可行性。为了实现这些目标，开发计划包括一系列里程碑，遵循测试驱动的开发项目管理策略，包括模拟测试（软件在环）、桌面测试（硬件在环）和现场测试。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader/commercial impact of this Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase I project is a tool to help mitigate the wildfire crisis in the western United States. Prescribed burns are one of the most effective ways to prevent the uncontrolled, large-scale wildfires that devastate entire ecosystems, communities, and economies, but the environmental assessment required for burns may delay the burn by months or years due to overburdened agencies. The innovation addresses this pain point with an automated survey solution, reducing both the paperwork burden and the potential for error in burn area vegetation mapping and spatial fire modeling. The solution ensures that prescribed burn plans use the best available vegetation data, providing fire managers with an accurate prediction of expected fire behavior for determining control strategy, staffing, and resources. This innovation would be the first automated prescribed burn spatial fire modeling solution using an autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). This innovation meets the STTR program’s focus on unproven, high-impact innovations because sub-canopy mapping by UAV is a cutting-edge application of autonomous flight, with challenges in optimization and decision-making. The application of UAV technology to prescribed burn environmental assessments will help to address the growing wildfire crisis in the United States by reducing the delay between the decision to burn at a selected site and the execution of the burn. The technical hurdles to be addressed by the proposed project include both real-time, sub-canopy 3D mapping and optimization for constraints across sensor requirements, cluttered environment exploration, and SWAP (size, weight, and power) limitations. The goals are to produce a high-fidelity, open-source. UAV exploration environment, to implement 3D mapping on a resource-constrained computer that meets UAV payload requirements, to incorporate species-specific decision-making criteria into the UAV exploration algorithm, and to conduct validation testing to verify technical and early commercial feasibility. To achieve these goals, the development plan includes a series of milestones following a test-driven, development project management strategy, including simulation testing (software in the loop), tabletop testing (hardware in the loop), and field tests.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.