Rapid mapping, monitoring and tracking-Development of low-cost unmanned aerial mapping system (UAMS)

人们不断要求减少从空中和空间传感器获取的地理数据生成地理信息所需的时间和成本。在诸如应急响应、消防、交通和环境监测等条件、事件和现象在空间和时间上不断变化的情况下，获取和处理时间变得至关重要。快速绘图、监测和跟踪系统和技术的可用性将有助于减少这种“等待时间”，提供所需的数据和信息，以支持及时的基于知识的决策。本研究提出了一种方法，旨在通过开发携带成像和测距传感器的柔性空中平台以及开发映射、变化检测和跟踪方法来减少采集和处理时间。空中数据收集仍然是获得一个地区更好的视角和覆盖范围的一种方式，也有能力在灵活的访问时间进行有针对性的覆盖。传统的空中测量存在一定的局限性，如动员成本高、飞行受限等。新兴的低成本无人机（UAV）将用于开发一种无人机测绘系统（UAMS），该系统由配备GPS/INS导航系统的飞行器以及成像和测距传感器组成，例如静止和视频摄像机以及激光雷达。将开发方法和技术，从UAMS获得的数据中提取度量和专题地理信息。监测和跟踪研究将涉及在估计过程中综合现有数据和信息，以便检测变化和使用视频图像序列来监测和跟踪快速发生的时空事件/现象。这项研究的结果预计将有助于紧急响应、环境监测、生态系统监测、消防、搜索和救援行动以及交通监测等时间关键业务。它们还将支持面向应用的映射，比如管道监控和精准农业。

There is a continuous demand for reducing the time and cost required to generate geo-information from geo-data acquired from air-and space-borne sensors. The acquisition and processing time is becoming critical for situations, such as emergency response, fire fighting, traffic and environmental monitoring, where the conditions, events and phenomena are continuously changing in space and time. The availability of rapid mapping, monitoring and tracking systems and technology will contribute to reducing this "waiting-time" by providing the required data and information to support on-time knowledge-based decision-making. This research proposes an approach aiming to reduce both the acquisition and processing time by developing a flexible aerial platform carrying imaging and ranging sensors and by developing methods for mapping, change detection and tracking. Aerial data collection is still a way to obtain better perspective and coverage over an area and also has the ability for targeted coverage at flexible visiting times. Traditional air-surveys have certain limitations, such as high mobilization costs and flight restrictions. The emerging low-cost unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) will be used to develop an unmanned aerial mapping system (UAMS), consisting of the aerial vehicle equipped with GPS/INS navigation systems coupled with imaging and ranging sensors, such as still and video camera and LIDAR. Methods and technology will be developed to extract metric and thematic geo-information from the UAMS acquired data. Monitoring and tracking research will involve the integration of existing data and information in the estimation process for change detection and the use of video image sequence to monitor and track fast-occurring spatio-temporal events/phenomena. The results of this research are expected to contribute to time-critical operations such as emergency response, environmental monitoring, ecosystems monitoring, fire fighting, search and rescue operations, and traffic monitoring. They will also support application oriented mapping, such as pipeline monitoring and precision farming.