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Drones, Volume 7, Issue 11

2023 November - 39 articles

Cover Story: Wildlife abundance surveys are important tools for making decisions regarding nature conservation and management. Cryptic and nocturnal mammals can be difficult to monitor, and methods to obtain more accurate data on the density and population trends of these species are needed. We propose a novel monitoring method using an aerial drone with a laser rangefinder and high zoom capabilities for thermal imagery, and demonstrate that it can detect significantly more hares than a traditional spotlight survey method. Besides covering more survey area within the same timeframe, the drone method offers a foundation for studying animal behavior simultaneously with density surveys. View this paper
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Articles (39)

  • Article
  • Open Access
4 Citations
5,335 Views
19 Pages

Self-Calibration of UAV Thermal Imagery Using Gradient Descent Algorithm

  • Radosław Szostak,
  • Mirosław Zimnoch,
  • Przemysław Wachniew and
  • Alina Jasek-Kamińska

20 November 2023

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) thermal imagery offers several advantages for environmental monitoring, as it can provide a low-cost, high-resolution, and flexible solution to measure the temperature of the surface of the land. Limitations related to t...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in Atmospheric Research)
  • Article
  • Open Access
42 Citations
6,931 Views
18 Pages

Implementation of an Edge-Computing Vision System on Reduced-Board Computers Embedded in UAVs for Intelligent Traffic Management

  • Sergio Bemposta Rosende,
  • Sergio Ghisler,
  • Javier Fernández-Andrés and
  • Javier Sánchez-Soriano

20 November 2023

Advancements in autonomous driving have seen unprecedented improvement in recent years. This work addresses the challenge of enhancing the navigation of autonomous vehicles in complex urban environments such as intersections and roundabouts through t...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Edge Computing and IoT Technologies for Drones)
  • Article
  • Open Access
14 Citations
5,626 Views
13 Pages

20 November 2023

As a result of increasing urbanization, traffic monitoring in cities has become a challenging task. The use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) provides an attractive solution to this problem. Multi-Object Tracking (MOT) for UAVs is a key technology t...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Perception, Communications, and Control for Drones)
  • Feature Paper
  • Article
  • Open Access
32 Citations
11,785 Views
13 Pages

Drone with Mounted Thermal Infrared Cameras for Monitoring Terrestrial Mammals

  • Hanne Lyngholm Larsen,
  • Katrine Møller-Lassesen,
  • Esther Magdalene Ellersgaard Enevoldsen,
  • Sarah Bøgh Madsen and ,
  • Maria Trier Obsen,
  • Peter Povlsen,
  • Dan Bruhn,
  • Cino Pertoldi and
  • Sussie Pagh
  • + 4 authors+ 0 author

18 November 2023

This study investigates the use of a drone equipped with a thermal camera for recognizing wild mammal species in open areas and to determine the sex and age of red deer (Cervus elaphus) and roe deer (Capreolus capreoulus) in a 13 km2 moor in Denmark....

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Drone-Based Wildlife Protection, Monitoring, and Conservation Management)
  • Article
  • Open Access
25 Citations
4,372 Views
22 Pages

17 November 2023

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) open new methods for efficient and rapid transportation in urban logistics distribution, where task allocation is a significant issue. In urban logistics systems, the energy status of UAVs is a critical factor in ensur...

  • Article
  • Open Access
17 Citations
6,087 Views
14 Pages

QuickNav: An Effective Collision Avoidance and Path-Planning Algorithm for UAS

  • Dipraj Debnath,
  • Ahmad Faizul Hawary,
  • Muhammad Iftishah Ramdan,
  • Fernando Vanegas Alvarez and
  • Felipe Gonzalez

17 November 2023

Obstacle avoidance is a desirable capability for Unmanned Aerial Systems (UASs)/drones which prevents crashes and reduces pilot fatigue, particularly when operating in the Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS). In this paper, we present QuickNav, a sol...

  • Article
  • Open Access
12 Citations
4,942 Views
21 Pages

15 November 2023

In recent years, the demand for Urban Air Mobility (UAM) and Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) has driven the emergence of new aircraft designs, with the Staggered Rotor System being widely applied in these vertical take-off and landing aircraft. Due to t...

  • Article
  • Open Access
26 Citations
7,901 Views
15 Pages

Vision-Based Deep Reinforcement Learning of UAV-UGV Collaborative Landing Policy Using Automatic Curriculum

  • Chang Wang,
  • Jiaqing Wang,
  • Changyun Wei,
  • Yi Zhu and ,
  • Dong Yin and
  • Jie Li
  • + 1 author+ 0 author

13 November 2023

Collaborative autonomous landing of a quadrotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) on a moving Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV) presents challenges due to the need for accurate real-time tracking of the UGV and the adjustment for the landing policy. To addre...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Cooperation of Drones and Other Manned/Unmanned Systems)
  • Article
  • Open Access
15 Citations
4,505 Views
18 Pages

13 November 2023

This paper introduces a practical navigation approach for nonholonomic Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in 3D environment settings with numerous stationary and dynamic obstacles. To achieve the intended outcome, Dynamic Programming (DP) is combined wi...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Conceptual Design, Modeling, and Control Strategies of Drones-II)
  • Feature Paper
  • Article
  • Open Access
9 Citations
6,961 Views
21 Pages

Burrow-Nesting Seabird Survey Using UAV-Mounted Thermal Sensor and Count Automation

  • Jacob Virtue,
  • Darren Turner,
  • Guy Williams,
  • Stephanie Zeliadt and ,
  • Henry Walshaw and
  • Arko Lucieer
  • + 1 author+ 0 author

13 November 2023

Seabird surveys are used to monitor population demography and distribution and help us understand anthropogenic pressures on seabird species. Burrow-nesting seabirds are difficult to survey. Current ground survey methods are invasive, time-consuming...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Drone Advances in Wildlife Research)
  • Article
  • Open Access
8 Citations
4,599 Views
16 Pages

13 November 2023

Swarm models hold significant importance as they provide the collective behavior of self-organized systems. Boids model is a fundamental framework for studying emergent behavior in swarms systems. It addresses problems related to simulating the emerg...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Distributed Control, Optimization, and Game of UAV Swarm Systems)
  • Article
  • Open Access
5 Citations
3,794 Views
15 Pages

12 November 2023

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-assisted simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) systems have recently gained significant attraction in internet-of-things (IoT) applications that have limited or no infrastructure. Specifically, the...

(This article belongs to the Section Drone Communications)
  • Article
  • Open Access
14 Citations
4,232 Views
37 Pages

10 November 2023

This paper presents the Vertidrome Airside Level of Service (VALoS) framework, a novel performance metric designed to evaluate airside traffic flow operations at vertidromes in the context of Urban Air Mobility (UAM). As the UAM industry rapidly evol...

(This article belongs to the Section Innovative Urban Mobility)
  • Article
  • Open Access
10 Citations
4,023 Views
22 Pages

U-Net Performance for Beach Wrack Segmentation: Effects of UAV Camera Bands, Height Measurements, and Spectral Indices

  • Edvinas Tiškus,
  • Martynas Bučas,
  • Jonas Gintauskas,
  • Marija Kataržytė and
  • Diana Vaičiūtė

9 November 2023

This study delves into the application of the U-Net convolutional neural network (CNN) model for beach wrack (BW) segmentation and monitoring in coastal environments using multispectral imagery. Through the utilization of different input configuratio...

(This article belongs to the Section Drones in Ecology)
  • Article
  • Open Access
13 Citations
5,254 Views
19 Pages

Vehicle-to-Vehicle Based Autonomous Flight Coordination Control System for Safer Operation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

  • Lin Shan,
  • Ryu Miura,
  • Takashi Matsuda,
  • Miho Koshikawa and ,
  • Huan-Bang Li and
  • Takeshi Matsumura
  • + 1 author+ 0 author

9 November 2023

The exponential growth of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones in recent years has raised concerns about their safe operation, especially in beyond-line-of-sight (BLOS) scenarios. Existing unmanned aircraft system traffic management (UTM) heavil...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue UAVs Communications for 6G)
  • Article
  • Open Access
5 Citations
2,787 Views
15 Pages

Using UAVs and Machine Learning for Nothofagus alessandrii Species Identification in Mediterranean Forests

  • Antonio M. Cabrera-Ariza,
  • Miguel Peralta-Aguilera,
  • Paula V. Henríquez-Hernández and
  • Rómulo Santelices-Moya

9 November 2023

This study explores the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and machine learning algorithms for the identification of Nothofagus alessandrii (ruil) species in the Mediterranean forests of Chile. The endangered nature of this species, coupled with...

(This article belongs to the Topic Individual Tree Detection (ITD) and Its Applications)
  • Review
  • Open Access
55 Citations
13,327 Views
21 Pages

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in Marine Mammal Research: A Review of Current Applications and Challenges

  • Miguel Álvarez-González,
  • Paula Suarez-Bregua,
  • Graham J. Pierce and
  • Camilo Saavedra

9 November 2023

Research on the ecology and biology of marine mammal populations is necessary to understand ecosystem dynamics and to support conservation management. Emerging monitoring tools and instruments offer the opportunity to obtain such information in an af...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Drones for Biodiversity Conservation)
  • Article
  • Open Access
18 Citations
4,935 Views
23 Pages

8 November 2023

As technology advances, the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and image sensors for structural monitoring and diagnostics is becoming increasingly critical. This approach enables the efficient inspection and assessment of structural conditions....

  • Article
  • Open Access
16 Citations
4,048 Views
18 Pages

Robust Path-Following Control for AUV under Multiple Uncertainties and Input Saturation

  • Jianming Miao,
  • Xingyu Sun,
  • Qichao Chen,
  • Haosu Zhang and ,
  • Wenchao Liu and
  • Yanyun Wang
  • + 1 author+ 0 author

8 November 2023

In this paper, a robust path-following control strategy is proposed to deal with the path-following problem of the underactuated autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) with multiple uncertainties and input saturation, and the effectiveness of the propos...

  • Article
  • Open Access
20 Citations
4,630 Views
20 Pages

Clustering-Based Multi-Region Coverage-Path Planning of Heterogeneous UAVs

  • Peng Xiao,
  • Ni Li,
  • Feng Xie,
  • Haihong Ni and ,
  • Min Zhang and
  • Ban Wang
  • + 1 author+ 0 author

7 November 2023

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) multi-area coverage-path planning has a broad range of applications in agricultural mapping and military reconnaissance. Compared to homogeneous UAVs, heterogeneous UAVs have higher application value due to their super...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Autonomous Flight of Drone: Control, Trajectory Optimization and Mission Planning)
  • Article
  • Open Access
13 Citations
4,136 Views
18 Pages

Research on Data Link Channel Decoding Optimization Scheme for Drone Power Inspection Scenarios

  • Haizhi Yu,
  • Kaisa Zhang,
  • Xu Zhao,
  • Yubing Zhang and ,
  • Bingfeng Cui,
  • Shujuan Sun,
  • Gengshuo Liu,
  • Bo Yu,
  • Chao Ma and
  • Weidong Gao
  • + 6 authors+ 1 author

6 November 2023

With the rapid development of smart grids, the deployment number of transmission lines has significantly increased, posing significant challenges to the detection and maintenance of power facilities. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have become a comm...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Resilient Networking and Task Allocation for Drone Swarms)
  • Feature Paper
  • Article
  • Open Access
13 Citations
5,267 Views
19 Pages

6 November 2023

Wildlife abundance surveys are important tools for making decisions regarding nature conservation and management. Cryptic and nocturnal mammals can be difficult to monitor, and methods to obtain more accurate data on density and population trends of...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Drone-Based Wildlife Protection, Monitoring, and Conservation Management)
  • Article
  • Open Access
7 Citations
4,192 Views
18 Pages

Detection of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) in Indoor Environments Using Nano Quadcopter

  • Aline Mara Oliveira,
  • Aniel Silva Morais,
  • Gabriela Vieira Lima,
  • Rafael Monteiro Jorge Alves Souza and
  • Luis Cláudio Oliveira-Lopes

6 November 2023

The dispersion of chemical gases poses a threat to human health, animals, and the environment. Leaks or accidents during the handling of samples and laboratory materials can result in the uncontrolled release of hazardous or explosive substances. The...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Detection, Security, and Communication for UAV)
  • Article
  • Open Access
10 Citations
3,557 Views
13 Pages

Harnessing the Power of Remote Sensing and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: A Comparative Analysis for Soil Loss Estimation on the Loess Plateau

  • Narges Kariminejad,
  • Mohammad Kazemi Garajeh,
  • Mohsen Hosseinalizadeh,
  • Foroogh Golkar and
  • Hamid Reza Pourghasemi

4 November 2023

This study explored the innovative use of multiple remote sensing satellites and unmanned aerial vehicles to calculate soil losses in the Loess Plateau of Iran. This finding emphasized the importance of using advanced technologies to develop accurate...

(This article belongs to the Topic Advances in Earth Observation and Geosciences)
  • Article
  • Open Access
17 Citations
5,224 Views
22 Pages

Stability of Medicines Transported by Cargo Drones: Investigating the Effects of Vibration from Multi-Stage Flight

  • Katherine Theobald,
  • Wanqing Zhu,
  • Timothy Waters,
  • Thomas Cherrett and ,
  • Andy Oakey and
  • Paul G. Royall
  • + 1 author+ 0 author

3 November 2023

The timely distribution of medicines to patients is an essential part of the patient care plan, and maximising efficiency in the logistics systems behind these movements is vital to minimise cost. Before drones can be used for moving medical cargo, m...

  • Article
  • Open Access
42 Citations
6,413 Views
20 Pages

A Motion Deblurring Network for Enhancing UAV Image Quality in Bridge Inspection

  • Jin-Hwan Lee,
  • Gi-Hun Gwon,
  • In-Ho Kim and
  • Hyung-Jo Jung

2 November 2023

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been increasingly utilized for facility safety inspections due to their superior safety, cost effectiveness, and inspection accuracy compared to traditional manpower-based methods. High-resolution images captured...

  • Article
  • Open Access
9 Citations
3,984 Views
31 Pages

1 November 2023

With multi-sensors embedded, flexible unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can collect sensory data and provide various services for all walks of life. However, limited computing capability and battery energy put a great burden on UAVs to handle emerging...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Edge Computing and IoT Technologies for Drones)
  • Article
  • Open Access
10 Citations
3,467 Views
26 Pages

1 November 2023

To realize unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) situation assessment, a Bayesian network (BN) for situation assessment is established. Aimed at the problem that the parameters of the BN are difficult to obtain, an improved whale optimization algorithm based...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Perception, Decision-Making and Control of Intelligent Unmanned System)
  • Article
  • Open Access
14 Citations
4,669 Views
27 Pages

31 October 2023

A method is proposed to estimate the swing state of a suspended payload in multirotor drone delivery scenarios. Starting from the equations of motion of the coupled slung load system, defined by two point masses interconnected by a rigid link, a recu...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Emerging Technologies and Innovations in Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Control Systems)
  • Article
  • Open Access
2 Citations
2,544 Views
16 Pages

Competition and Cooperation for Multiple Solar Powered Unmanned Aerial Vehicles under Static Soaring

  • Yansen Wu,
  • Ke Li,
  • Anmin Zhao,
  • Shaofan Wang and ,
  • Yuangan Li and
  • Xiaodan Chen
  • + 1 author+ 0 author

31 October 2023

This work examines the competition and allocation of multiple solar-powered unmanned aerial vehicles (SUAVs) to a single thermal since multiple SUAVs often demonstrate superior mission performance compared to a single SUAV. Additionally, they can har...

  • Article
  • Open Access
6 Citations
6,348 Views
24 Pages

Development of a Novel Implementation of a Remotely Piloted Aircraft System over 25 kg for Hyperspectral Payloads

  • Juan Pablo Arroyo-Mora,
  • Margaret Kalacska,
  • Oliver Lucanus,
  • René Laliberté and ,
  • Yong Chen,
  • Janine Gorman,
  • Alexandra Marion,
  • Landen Coulas,
  • Hali Barber and
  • Martin Bérubé
  • + 10 authors+ 5 authors

27 October 2023

A main aspect limiting the operation of low-altitude remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPAS) over 25 kg, integrating pushbroom hyperspectral sensors, comes from the challenges related to aircraft performance (e.g., flight time) and regulatory aspect...

(This article belongs to the Section Drones in Ecology)
  • Article
  • Open Access
6 Citations
3,837 Views
20 Pages

Performance Analysis of Visual–Inertial–Range Cooperative Localization for Unmanned Autonomous Vehicle Swarm

  • Jun Lai,
  • Suyang Liu,
  • Xiaojia Xiang,
  • Chaoran Li and ,
  • Dengqing Tang and
  • Han Zhou
  • + 1 author+ 0 author

26 October 2023

The swarm of small UAVs is an emerging technology that will enable abundant cooperative tasks. To tackle the positioning problem for the UAV swarm, cooperative localization (CL) has been intensively studied since it uses relative measurement to impro...

  • Article
  • Open Access
21 Citations
4,957 Views
19 Pages

Monitoring Maize Leaf Spot Disease Using Multi-Source UAV Imagery

  • Xiao Jia,
  • Dameng Yin,
  • Yali Bai,
  • Xun Yu and ,
  • Yang Song,
  • Minghan Cheng,
  • Shuaibing Liu,
  • Yi Bai,
  • Lin Meng and
  • Xiuliang Jin
  • + 12 authors+ 7 authors

26 October 2023

Maize leaf spot is a common disease that hampers the photosynthesis of maize by destroying the pigment structure of maize leaves, thus reducing the yield. Traditional disease monitoring is time-consuming and laborious. Therefore, a fast and effective...

  • Article
  • Open Access
3 Citations
5,087 Views
18 Pages

Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems and Agro-Terrestrial Surveys Comparison for Generating Digital Elevation Surfaces for Irrigation and Precision Grading

  • Richard A. Pickett,
  • John W. Nowlin,
  • Ahmed A. Hashem,
  • Michele L. Reba and ,
  • Joseph H. Massey and
  • Scott Alsbrook
  • + 1 author+ 0 author

26 October 2023

Advances in remote sensing and small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS) have been applied to various precision agriculture applications. However, there has been limited research on the accuracy of real-time kinematic (RTK) sUAS photogrammetric elevatio...

(This article belongs to the Section Drones in Agriculture and Forestry)
  • Article
  • Open Access
4 Citations
5,501 Views
25 Pages

Trajectory Planning and Control Design for Aerial Autonomous Recovery of a Quadrotor

  • Dongyue Du,
  • Min Chang,
  • Linkai Tang,
  • Haodong Zou and ,
  • Chu Tang and
  • Junqiang Bai
  • + 1 author+ 0 author

26 October 2023

One of the most essential approaches to expanding the capabilities of autonomous systems is through collaborative operation. A separated lift and thrust vertical takeoff and landing mother unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and a quadrotor child UAV are u...

  • Article
  • Open Access
10 Citations
4,855 Views
17 Pages

25 October 2023

Unoccupied Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are a widely applied tool used to monitor shallow water habitats. A recurrent issue when conducting UAV-based monitoring of submerged habitats is the collection of ground-truthing data needed as training and validati...

(This article belongs to the Topic Drones for Coastal and Coral Reef Environments)
  • Article
  • Open Access
12 Citations
3,556 Views
23 Pages

Dual-UAV Collaborative High-Precision Passive Localization Method Based on Optoelectronic Platform

  • Xu Kang,
  • Yu Shao,
  • Guanbing Bai,
  • He Sun and ,
  • Tao Zhang and
  • Dejiang Wang
  • + 1 author+ 0 author

25 October 2023

Utilizing the optical characteristics of the target for detection and localization does not require actively emitting signals and has the advantage of strong concealment. Once the optoelectronic platform mounted on the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) d...

  • Article
  • Open Access
6 Citations
7,682 Views
21 Pages

Drone-Based Vertical Atmospheric Temperature Profiling in Urban Environments

  • Jokūbas Laukys,
  • Bernardas Maršalka,
  • Ignas Daugėla and
  • Gintautas Stankūnavičius

24 October 2023

The accurate and detailed measurement of the vertical temperature, humidity, pressure, and wind profiles of the atmosphere is pivotal for high-resolution numerical weather prediction, the determination of atmospheric stability, as well as investigati...

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Drones - ISSN 2504-446X