Small unmanned airborne systems to support oil and gas pipeline monitoring and mapping

Acknowledgments We thank Johan Havelaar, Aeryon Labs Inc., AeronVironment Inc. and Aeronautics Inc. for kindly permitting the use of materials in Fig. 1.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Last generation instrument for agriculture multispectral data collection

In recent years, the acquisition and analysis of multispectral data are gaining a growing interest and importance in agriculture. On the other hand, new technologies are opening up for the possibility of developing and implementing sensors with relatively small size and featuring high technical performances. Thanks to low weights and high signal to noise ratios, such sensors can be transported by different type of means (terrestrial as well as aerial vehicles), giving new opportunities for assessment and monitoring of several crops at different growing stages or health conditions. The choice and specialization of individual bands within the electromagnetic spectrum ranging from the ultraviolet to the infrared, plays a fundamental role in the definition of the so-called vegetation indices (eg. NDVI, GNDVI, SAVI, and dozens of others), posing new questions and challenges in their effective implementation. The present paper firstly discusses the needs of low-distance based sensors for indices calculation, then focuses on development of a new multispectral instrument specially developed for agricultural multispectral analysis. Such instrument features high frequency and high resolution imaging through nine different sensors (1 RGB and 8 monochromes with relative band-pass filters, covering the 390 to 950 nm range). The instrument allows synchronized multiband imaging thanks to integrated global shutter technology, with a frame rate up to 5 Hz; exposure time can be as low as 1/5000 s. An applicative case study is eventually reported on an area featuring different materials (organic and non-organic), to show the new instrument potential. Last generation instrument for agriculture multispectral data collection. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317596952_Last_generation_instrument_for_agriculture_multispectral_data_collection [accessed Jul 11, 2017]

Cities and Drones: What Cities Need to Know about Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)

NLC's municipal guide, Cities and Drones, is designed to serve as a primer on drones for local officials, providing insight into the recently released federal rules relating to drone operation, as well as offering suggestions for how local governments can craft their own drone ordinances to encourage innovation while also protecting their cities.Drones have the potential to revolutionize many industries and city services, particularly as their technology advances. There are many applications for drones within the public sector at the local and state level. Drones can be used for law enforcement and firefighting, as rural ambulances, and for inspections, environmental monitoring, and disaster management. Any commercial arena that involves outdoor photography or visual inspection will likely be experimenting with drones in the near future, as will retailers who want to speed up package delivery.However, drones also present challenges. There are some safety issues, for instance, when operators fly their drones over people or near planes. City residents often have privacy concerns when any small device hovering nearby could potentially be taking photos or video. The FAA's final rule on drones left some opportunity for city governments to legislate on this issue. Rather than ban them outright, city officials should consider how this new technology might serve residents or enhance city services

A Tale of Two Sovereigns: Federal and State Use and Regulation of Unmanned Aircraft Systems

Despite claims to the contrary, the federal government is severely limited in what it can do to regulate unmanned aircraft systems (UASs). States, on the other hand, as governments of general jurisdiction, have expansive powers that they are already using to grapple with the questions posed by UAS related to privacy, crime, and public safety. This chapter outlines the evolution of federal measures, noting their limitations, before delving into three categories of state law, related to law enforcement, criminal measures, and regulatory regimes. The chapter then turns to the history of state sovereignty, looking at states’ jurisdiction over persons and land within their bounds, before turning to the limits of federal interstate commerce authorities. With river navigation and aviation serving as the forerunners of federal power, the chapter distinguishes the types of questions that accompany UAS, arguing that it is in relation to adjacent airspace and noneconomic activities where the federal government is at its weakest in any effort to regulate the states. Up to 500 ft above the ground, states have sovereignty, with authority over roads, land, and waterways. Within this domain, federal Commerce Clause powers only occupy a narrow area, leaving state police powers the dominant framework for UAS. The chapter concludes by highlighting the advantages of having states take the lead for UAS, focusing on the risk to rights of allowing the federal government to move into this realm and underscoring the importance in the role of the states as incubators of innovation

MusA: Using Indoor Positioning and Navigation to Enhance Cultural Experiences in a museum

In recent years there has been a growing interest into the use of multimedia mobile guides in museum environments. Mobile devices have the capabilities to detect the user context and to provide pieces of information suitable to help visitors discovering and following the logical and emotional connections that develop during the visit. In this scenario, location based services (LBS) currently represent an asset, and the choice of the technology to determine users' position, combined with the definition of methods that can effectively convey information, become key issues in the design process. In this work, we present MusA (Museum Assistant), a general framework for the development of multimedia interactive guides for mobile devices. Its main feature is a vision-based indoor positioning system that allows the provision of several LBS, from way-finding to the contextualized communication of cultural contents, aimed at providing a meaningful exploration of exhibits according to visitors' personal interest and curiosity. Starting from the thorough description of the system architecture, the article presents the implementation of two mobile guides, developed to respectively address adults and children, and discusses the evaluation of the user experience and the visitors' appreciation of these application