A UAV-based system for hybrid LiDAR and photogrammetry sensing

无人机(UAV)是一种没有人类飞行员的飞机。根据最近一份题为《按类型、应用和地理划分的无人机市场-到2020年的分析和预测》的市场研究报告，到2020年，全球无人机市场预计将达到55.9亿美元，比2015年增长800%。除了正在积极使用或开发的定制无人机，如美国陆军全球鹰和亚马逊Prime Air，商用无人机正变得越来越容易获得。随着计算能力的增加，这些无人机可以完成许多过去需要载人飞机的任务，而只需一小部分成本来装备和操作。将商用无人机用于民用和军事领域的各种应用的研究将是下一轮创新，加拿大应该是其中的领跑者。 拟议的资金将用于装备基于无人机的航空传感系统。该系统同时包含LiDAR(光检测和测距)和RGB图像传感器，使其能够捕获室外场景的高分辨率和彩色3D点云。它将支持纽芬兰纪念大学的各种研究项目，从开发新的航空遥感技术到将航空遥感应用于现实世界的问题。例如，设计用于重建大型户外场地3D模型的新颖的自主算法(Gong博士)，开发先进的空中视觉监视方法(Shehata和Gong博士)，对难以进入的地区进行环境监测(Devillers博士)，随时间推移进行海岸侵蚀评估和可视化(Devillers和Gong博士)，以及推导用于地面和空中飞行器协作作业的导航技术(Mann博士)。由于上述研究课题高度相关，这笔资金也将促进上述申请者之间的研究合作。

An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is an aircraft without a human pilot aboard. According to a recent market research report titled “UAV Drones Market by Type, Application, & Geography - Analysis & Forecast to 2020”, the global UAV drones market is expected to reach USD 5.59 Billion by 2020, a growth of 800% from 2015. Besides customized UAVs, such as US Army Global Hawk and Amazon Prime Air, being actively used or developed, commercial UAVs are becoming more and more accessible. With increased computational capacity, these UAVs can complete many tasks that used to require manned aircrafts, while only require a fraction of the cost to equip and operate. Research in using commercial UAVs for a variety of applications in both civilian and military fields will be the next round of innovation, of which the Canada should be a front-runner. The proposed funding will be used for equipping a UAV-based system for aerial sensing. The system contains both LiDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) and RGB image sensors, allowing it to capture high-resolution and colorized 3D point clouds of outdoor scenes. It will support a variety of research programs at Memorial University of Newfoundland, from developing novel aerial sensing technologies to applying aerial sensing to real-world problems. Examples include designing novel and autonomous algorithms for reconstructing 3D models for large outdoor sites (Dr. Gong), developing advanced methods for aerial visual surveillance (Drs. Shehata and Gong), conducting surveys of hard-to-access areas for environmental monitoring (Dr. Devillers), performing coastal erosion evaluation and visualization over time (Drs. Devillers and Gong), and deriving navigational techniques for collaborative operations of ground and aerial vehicles (Dr. Mann). Since the above research topics are highly related, the funding will also facilitate research collaboration among the aforementioned applicants.