Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for Wireless Localization in Search and Rescue

This thesis presents how unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can successfully assist in search and rescue (SAR) operations using wireless localization. The zone-grid to partition to capture/detect WiFi probe requests follows the concepts found in Search Theory Method. The UAV has attached a sensor, e.g., WiFi sniffer, to capture/detect the WiFi probes from victims or lost people’s smartphones. Applying the Random-Forest based machine learning algorithm, an estimation of the user\u27s location is determined with a 81.8% accuracy. UAV technology has shown limitations in the navigational performance and limited flight time. Procedures to optimize these limitations are presented. Additionally, how the UAV is maneuvered during flight is analyzed, considering different SAR flight patterns and Li-Po battery consumption rates of the UAV. Results show that controlling the UAV by remote-controll detected the most probes, but it is less power efficient compared to control it autonomously

Teleoperated visual inspection and surveillance with unmanned ground and aerial vehicles,” Int

Abstract—This paper introduces our robotic system named UGAV (Unmanned Ground-Air Vehicle) consisting of two semi-autonomous robot platforms, an Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV) and an Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV). The paper focuses on three topics of the inspection with the combined UGV and UAV: (A) teleoperated control by means of cell or smart phones with a new concept of automatic configuration of the smart phone based on a RKI-XML description of the vehicles control capabilities, (B) the camera and vision system with the focus to real time feature extraction e.g. for the tracking of the UAV and (C) the architecture and hardware of the UAV

Aerial-Ground collaborative sensing: Third-Person view for teleoperation

Rapid deployment and operation are key requirements in time critical application, such as Search and Rescue (SaR). Efficiently teleoperated ground robots can support first-responders in such situations. However, first-person view teleoperation is sub-optimal in difficult terrains, while a third-person perspective can drastically increase teleoperation performance. Here, we propose a Micro Aerial Vehicle (MAV)-based system that can autonomously provide third-person perspective to ground robots. While our approach is based on local visual servoing, it further leverages the global localization of several ground robots to seamlessly transfer between these ground robots in GPS-denied environments. Therewith one MAV can support multiple ground robots on a demand basis. Furthermore, our system enables different visual detection regimes, and enhanced operability, and return-home functionality. We evaluate our system in real-world SaR scenarios.Comment: Accepted for publication in 2018 IEEE International Symposium on Safety, Security and Rescue Robotics (SSRR

Victim Detection and Localization in Emergencies

Detecting and locating victims in emergency scenarios comprise one of the most powerful tools to save lives. Fast actions are crucial for victims because time is running against them. Radio devices are currently omnipresent within the physical proximity of most people and allow locating buried victims in catastrophic scenarios. In this work, we present the benefits of using WiFi Fine Time Measurement (FTM), Ultra-Wide Band (UWB), and fusion technologies to locate victims under rubble. Integrating WiFi FTM and UWB in a drone may cover vast areas in a short time. Moreover, the detection capacity of WiFi and UWB for finding individuals is also compared. These findings are then used to propose a method for detecting and locating victims in disaster scenarios.This work was performed in the framework of the Horizon 2020 project LOCUS (Grant Agreement Number 871249), receiving funds from the European Union. This work was also partially funded by Junta de Andalucia (Project PY18-4647:PENTA)

Wi-Fi Finger-Printing Based Indoor Localization Using Nano-Scale Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Explosive growth in the number of mobile devices like smartphones, tablets, and smartwatches has escalated the demand for localization-based services, spurring development of numerous indoor localization techniques. Especially, widespread deployment of wireless LANs prompted ever increasing interests in WiFi-based indoor localization mechanisms. However, a critical shortcoming of such localization schemes is the intensive time and labor requirements for collecting and building the WiFi fingerprinting database, especially when the system needs to cover a large space. In this thesis, we propose to automate the WiFi fingerprint survey process using a group of nano-scale unmanned aerial vehicles (NAVs). The proposed system significantly reduces the efforts for collecting WiFi fingerprints. Furthermore, since these NAVs explore a 3D space, the WiFi fingerprints of a 3D space can be obtained increasing the localization accuracy. The proposed system is implemented on a commercially available miniature open-source quadcopter platform by integrating a contemporary WiFi - fingerprint - based localization system. Experimental results demonstrate that the localization error is about 2m, which exhibits only about 20cm of accuracy degradation compared with the manual WiFi fingerprint survey methods

People Counting and occupancy Monitoring using WiFi Probe Requests and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Smart phones have become an important part of our daily lives due to their capabilities of accessing the web using WiFi and mobile data networks. These WiFi equipment are constantly sending out packets referred as probe requests, which can be tracked using wireless sniffers. In this thesis, first we investigate capturing of WiFi probe request packets using the help of WiFi Pineapple devices, and analyze how we can use signal strength information of probe request data for indoor occupancy monitoring. Applications of such occupancy monitoring into building surveillance and building energy management are also discussed. After completing the initial test indoors, research was moved to outdoor monitoring with the help of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) flying in various trajectories and capturing probe request messages. The information captured from the probe requests is used to identify and localize WiFi users with a single UAV, which can be instrumental in search and rescue applications. Finally, we study in detail various security, privacy, and public safety issues related to drones equipped with wireless communications capabilities

Towards the use of unmanned aerial systems for providing sustainable services in smart cities

La sostenibilidad está en el centro de muchos campos de aplicación en los que el uso de los sistemas aéreos no tripulados (SUA) es cada vez más importante (por ejemplo, la agricultura, la detección y predicción de incendios, la vigilancia ambiental, la cartografía, etc.). Sin embargo, su uso y evolución están muy condicionados por el campo de aplicación específico para el que están diseñados y, por lo tanto, no pueden ser fácilmente reutilizados entre los diferentes campos de aplicación. Desde este punto de vista, al no ser polivalentes, podemos decir que no son totalmente sostenibles. Teniendo esto en cuenta, el objetivo de este trabajo es doble: por un lado, identificar el conjunto de características que debe proporcionar un UAS para ser considerado sostenible y demostrar que no hay ningún UAS que satisfaga todas estas características; por otra parte, presentar una arquitectura abierta y sostenible de los UAS que pueda utilizarse para construir UAS a petición para proporcionar las características necesarias en cada campo de aplicación. Dado que esta arquitectura se basa principalmente en la adaptabilidad del software y el hardware, contribuye a la sostenibilidad técnica de las ciudades.Sustainability is at the heart of many application fields where the use of Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) is becoming more and more important (e.g., agriculture, fire detection and prediction, environmental surveillance, mapping, etc.). However, their usage and evolution are highly conditioned by the specific application field they are designed for, and thus, they cannot be easily reused among different application fields. From this point of view, being that they are not multipurpose, we can say that they are not fully sustainable. Bearing this in mind, the objective of this paper is two-fold: on the one hand, to identify the whole set of features that must be provided by a UAS to be considered sustainable and to show that there is no UAS satisfying all these features; on the other hand, to present an open and sustainable UAS architecture that may be used to build UAS on demand to provide the features needed in each application field. Since this architecture is mainly based on software and hardware adaptability, it contributes to the technical sustainability of cities.• Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad y Fondos FEDER. Proyecto TIN2015-69957-R (I+D+i) • Junta de Extremadura y Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional. Ayuda GR15098 y IB16055 • Parcialmente financiado por Interreg V-A España-Portugal (POCTEP) 2014-2020 program. Proyecto 0045-4IE-4-PpeerReviewe