UAV and Drone Challenges Sample Clauses

UAV and Drone Challenges. The term UAV (unmanned Aerial Vehicles) refers to any flying aircraft without humans on board. In recent years, the usage of UAVs in different application fields has increased sig- nificantly. Currently, most important markets for UAVs are aerial photogrammetry, panoramic (a) (b) (c) Figure 3: Different obstacles in typical environments of UAVs photography, precision farming, surveillance and reconnaissance. Further application fields are rescue, law enforcement, logistics, research, etc. The usage of such systems in the entertainment domain is growing especially fast. This development is boosted by the con- stantly rising commercial market for small UAVs providing broad accessibility, diversity and low costs. Essential enhancements to UAV usage are expected from improvement of their capabilities; perception and intelligent evaluation of the environment make many new appli- cations possible. In most cases, UAVs are carrying sensor payload that allows to accomplish the respective task. Even though we are used to hear about autonomous drones, most of the current systems are still remotely piloted by humans. A human on the ground has to permanently monitor both the payload of the drone in order to successfully accomplish the desired mis- sion (e.g., to capture the desired data) and the drone flight in order to avoid collisions with obstacles. The simultaneous operation of the UAV and of the sensor payload is a quite challenging task. Mistakes may be fatal either with regard to the mission success or — much worse — with regard to the mission safety. Besides, there might be a limitation of the UAV operation area due to the need for a constantly available communication link between the UAV and the remote control station. Most of the small UAVs fly with velocities up to 60 km/h (17 m/s), but some of them can fly with velocities up to 180 km/h (50 m/s) and even more. The stopping distance is strongly dependent on the velocity, the type of the UAV and the payload. With the regular velocity of about 30 km/h of a common type of “multicopter”, the stopping distance is less than 5 m, but with more extreme UAVs it can be up to 50 m. The size of a dangerous obstacle is usually over 5 cm (Figure 3a), but in some cases obstacles with sizes of as less 2 mm, more difficult to detect, can also be dangerous (Figure 3b and 3c). As always, each technology comes along with drawbacks and potential for unintended abuse and this is in particular true for UAVs. With the growing numbe...