A novel drone-sharing solution : on-demand UAV sensing model

Abstract

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have increasingly attracted great attention in remote sensing
for 3D aerial mappings over the past decade. UAVs are feasible to fly through a target sensing
area with little or no human intervention in the practical fieldworks. In addition, UAVs can
travel across hazardous, dangerous, or uninhabited areas, due to their flexibility and long-range
flight capacity. However, there are several major challenges in running UAV-enabled sensing
missions by casual users. First of all, the current capital price of UAV devices and their corresponding
sensors are still expensive. Secondly, it requires professional UAV flight training and
licenses for the remote sensing operation. Third, UAV sensing needs deep technical knowledge
and various algorithms for flight trajectory planning, energy consumption, and data gathering.
To address the aforementioned constraints, this thesis proposes a drone-sharing solution and
aims to make UAVs accessible for everyone. We establish an on-demand UAV sensing model
that connects UAV service providers with potential users. The proposed system works as a service
by delivering a sensing request from the UAV service user to the service provider. In particular,
the sensing request includes the geometry information of the target areas. In addition,
the on-demand system can calculate the flight parameters, total coverage area, and estimated
sensing price. The system will also assign the sensing task to a UAV service provider. Once
the user completes the online payment, the flight mission is run by the UAV service provider
based on the recommend flight trajectory sent by the system. Finally, the collected dataset are
delivered to the users during or after the flight mission. Meanwhile, the calculated operational
cost is sent to the UAV provider. The flight mission is then set as completed.
This thesis also proposes a UAV platform that is specifically designed for the on-demand
UAV sensing. A detailed UAV platform implementation is introduced, which provides practical
system implementation and validation. Moreover, standard operating procedures and setup
guidelines are discussed and provided for the on-demand UAV sensing. Last but not least, we
propose a user-friendly interface, which illustrates the connections among the internal modules
of the system from the user’s perspective.
In summary, this thesis provides a drone-sharing solution to minimize the capital price of
UAVs, on-board sensors, and their accessories. Furthermore, it will close the gap between
UAV sensing and end-users. With the proposed on-demand UAV sensing, casual users are
able to collect quality videos or images from their target areas without preliminary aviation or
aerodynamic knowledge.

Date of Award	2021
Original language	English
Supervisor	Mohammad ABUALSHEIKH (Supervisor), Roland Goecke (Supervisor) & Damith HERATH (Supervisor)