Supporting UAVs with Edge Computing: A Review of Opportunities and Challenges

Over the last years, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have seen significant advancements in sensor capabilities and computational abilities, allowing for efficient autonomous navigation and visual tracking applications. However, the demand for computationally complex tasks has increased faster than advances in battery technology. This opens up possibilities for improvements using edge computing. In edge computing, edge servers can achieve lower latency responses compared to traditional cloud servers through strategic geographic deployments. Furthermore, these servers can maintain superior computational performance compared to UAVs, as they are not limited by battery constraints. Combining these technologies by aiding UAVs with edge servers, research finds measurable improvements in task completion speed, energy efficiency, and reliability across multiple applications and industries. This systematic literature review aims to analyze the current state of research and collect, select, and extract the key areas where UAV activities can be supported and improved through edge computing

In Our Own Words: Native Impressions—It Helped Us to Breathe

The pair of original prints is from the “In Our Own Words: Native Impressions” portfolio. Focused on individuals from the Tribal Nations of North Dakota, this collaborative project was intended to chronicle lives of contemporary Native American people through a series of original artworks. Four North Dakota tribal colleges hosted visits from two UND art professors, Kim Fink and Lucy Ganje, as well as Philadelphia artist Daniel Heyman and Leigh Jeanotte, a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa and Director of UND\u27s American Indian Student Services. During these visits, they talked with twelve tribal members, while Heyman drew their portraits. Produced by Sundog Multiples at the University of North Dakota, the portfolio contains twelve reduction woodblock prints based on the portraits by Heyman, along with fourteen letterpress prints by Ganje that contain words taken from interviews. The production of the prints was overseen by Fink.https://commons.und.edu/lam-all/1170/thumbnail.jp

Increasing Spatio-Temporal Resolution for Monitoring Alpine Solifluction Using Terrestrial Laser Scanners and 3D Vector Fields

This article investigates the usage of terrestrial laser scanner (TLS) point clouds for monitoring the gradual movements of soil masses due to freeze–thaw activity and water saturation, commonly referred to as solifluction. Solifluction is a geomorphic process which is characteristic for hillslopes in (high-)mountain areas, primarily alpine periglacial areas and the arctic. The movement can reach millimetre-to-centimetre per year velocities, remaining well below the typical displacement mangitudes of other frequently monitored natural objects, such as landslides and glaciers. Hence, a better understanding of solifluction processes requires increased spatial and temporal resolution with relatively high measurement accuracy. To that end, we developed a workflow for TLS point cloud processing, providing a 3D vector field that can capture soil mass displacement due to solifluction with high fidelity. This is based on the common image-processing techniques of feature detection and tracking. The developed workflow is tested on a study area placed in Hohe Tauern range of the Austrian Alps with a prominent assemblage of solifluction lobes. The derived displacements were compared with the established geomonitoring approach with total station and signalized markers and point cloud deformation monitoring approaches. The comparison indicated that the achieved results were in the same accuracy range as the established methods, with an advantage of notably higher spatial resolution. This improvement allowed for new insights considering the solifluction processes