6 research outputs found
Collaborative Mapping of Archaeological Sites using multiple UAVs
UAVs have found an important application in archaeological mapping. Majority
of the existing methods employ an offline method to process the data collected
from an archaeological site. They are time-consuming and computationally
expensive. In this paper, we present a multi-UAV approach for faster mapping of
archaeological sites. Employing a team of UAVs not only reduces the mapping
time by distribution of coverage area, but also improves the map accuracy by
exchange of information. Through extensive experiments in a realistic
simulation (AirSim), we demonstrate the advantages of using a collaborative
mapping approach. We then create the first 3D map of the Sadra Fort, a 15th
Century Fort located in Gujarat, India using our proposed method. Additionally,
we present two novel archaeological datasets recorded in both simulation and
real-world to facilitate research on collaborative archaeological mapping. For
the benefit of the community, we make the AirSim simulation environment, as
well as the datasets publicly available