DronProtect

Create an app that will enable small drone operators to know more about specific weather parameters, local terrain and no fly zones within a five-mile radius of their GPS location.

In this project "DronProtect" we’ve united not only the idea of security (preservation of integrity) of an unmanned aerial vehicle (drone) but the main thing is that we’ve provided the operator drone with the convenient service, providing him with all necessary information during operation: data drone sensors, digital maps, weather data information, Web-services and others.

The main problem that arises in the drone operators while carrying out the described tasks is the need of the analysis of video and photo materials in on-line mode with the drone during the extended time, the necessity of the effective determination of coordinates of objects and the transfer them to consumers and the formation of results.

We have implemented a prototype of a program management and analysis of complex drone video data, which will allow the owners of inexpensive and portable devices get close to the functional capabilities to large industrial drones. This will not only automate various stages of the operator but also improve the efficiency of decision -making in different situations.

The project is primarily designed to solve the next problems:

• monitoring the earth's surface;
• identification and assessment of natural and manmade disasters;
• forest cover monitoring, the fire situation assessment, determination of possible areas of the fire spread, illegal logging of forests;
• agriculture monitoring;
• monitoring of protected areas with a view to tracking the movement and accounting groups of animals, prevention of illegal activities of poachers;
• environmental monitoring areas;
• monitoring the status of water protection zones;
• study of landscape structure;
• monitoring the construction and the state of tourism facilities, recreation and sports.

Features of DronProtect program.

DronProtect program consists of the following blocks:

• receiving unit telemetry data sensor data;
• video information receiving unit;
• unit works with digital maps, tags and tracks of the flight;
• display unit of the additional information for the drone operator.

For telemetry data we used the modified MissionPlanner program that with the Client-Server technology provides the rate of data transfer from drone sensors.

For video data from the drone a regular video receiver or a digital signal connected to the computer through any available interface (eg USB) can be used.

DronProtect program enables you to capture video from the receiver and display on the screen. The center point of each video frame is linked to geographic coordinates using data drone sensors (latitude, longitude, heading, etc.). If it is necessary, the coordinate grid is put on the video.

For the orientation of the operator relatively to the current position of the drone (especially in unknown terrain) on the left side of the window displays a digital map of the area, which moves synchronously with the light of the location of the drone and its orientation in space (course). The Digital map of scalable and uses data (satellite, vector) different mapping services (Google, Bing, OpenStreet et al.). If it’s necessary the map data is cached to disk for further work in off-line mode.

Identifying the objects of interest in the video the drone operator can mark these objects and store video frames as bitmaps. For each detected object coordinates (WGS-84) are calculated and markers are applied, which are displayed on the digital map. Also passed drone route is displayed on the digital map.

Carrying out the flight in urbanized areas it is necessary to ensure not only the safety of the drone but of people too, to prevent possible collision, damage to infrastructure in the case of emergency situation or crash the machine. To do this any information for the drone operator can be displayed on the digital map: authorized flight corridors, the possible danger zones, meteorological data and others.

Markers of objects, their location, driving directions are saved as metadata files * .kml and can be opened in any GIS (ArcGis, GoogleEath, SASPlanet) or transferred to a mobile phone.

Perspective directions of research and development:

• data acquisition drone sensors directly from the device receiving telemetric information;
• improved binding of video images based on camera model, perspective distortion, etc.;
• the expansion of the information display on a digital map services, including Web, the output data directly to a video;
• the formation of the results of monitoring files (*.kmz - format) to store the labels of objects and their images (linked to geographical coordinates) obtained from video traffic routes;
• the development of the module of post-flight processing of video and photo with the corresponding geo-referenced;
• the formation of 3D - terrain models as a result of processing of video and photo drone.

ArduPilot Autopilot Suite – http://dev.ardupilot.org/ardupilot/index.html

GMap.NET - Great Maps for Windows – https://greatmaps.codeplex.com/

AForge.NET::Computer Vision, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics – www.aforgenet.com/