While maintenance dredging of port access channels is often required to maintain navigability, it can result in increased turbidity, sediment plumes, and associated reductions in water quality. Unoccupied aircraft systems (UAS, or drones) are increasingly applied to study water quality due to their high spatial and temporal resolutions. In this study, we investigated the use of drone imagery to monitor turbidity in the Morehead City Harbor, North Carolina, USA, during channel maintenance by hopper dredge. Drone flights were conducted concurrently with in-situ sampling during active dredging and post-dredging. Multispectral drone images were radiometrically calibrated, converted to reflectance and then turbidity using two separate processing methods and a single-band (red; 620nm-700nm) generic turbidity retrieval algorithm, and then compared to in-situ measurements. The method of using average reflectance to retrieve a single turbidity measurement per drone image produced agreeable results when compared to the in-situ measurements (R² = 0.84). This method was then used to generate turbidity maps and extract surface plumes. While this could be considered a limited validation, the results indicate that realistic values can be obtained from drone imagery for low and high turbidity concentrations (1-72 FNU), making drones a viable option for monitoring surface turbidity associated with dredging.

Drones are increasingly becoming a ubiquitous feature of society. They are being used for a multiplicity of applications for military, leisure, economic, and academic purposes. Their application in the latter, especially as social science research tools has seen a sharp uptake in the last decade. This has been possible due, largely, to significant developments in computerization and miniaturization which have culminated in safer, cheaper, lighter, and thus more accessible drones for social scientists. Despite their increasingly widespread use, there has not been an adequate reflection on their use in the spatial social sciences. There is need a deeper reflection on their application in these fields of study. Should the drone even be considered a tool in the toolbox of the social scientist? In which fields is it most relevant? Should it be taught as a course in the universities much in the same way that geographic information system (GIS) became mainstream in geography? What are the ethical implications of its application in the spatial social science? This paper is a brief reflection on these questions. We contend that drones are a neutral tool which can be good and evil. They have actual and potential wide applications in academia but can be a tool through which breaches in ethics can be occasioned given their unique abilities to capture data from vantage perspectives. Researchers therefore need to be circumspect in how they deploy this powerful tool which is increasingly becoming mainstream in the social sciences.

Shallow bathymetry inversion algorithms have long been applied in various types of remote sensing imagery with relative success. However, this approach requires that imagery with increased radiometric resolution in the visible spectrum is available. The recent developments in drones and camera sensors allow for testing current inversion techniques on new types of datasets. This study explores the bathymetric mapping capabilities of fused RGB and multispectral imagery, as an alternative to costly hyperspectral sensors. Combining drone-based RGB and multispectral imagery into a single cube dataset, provides the necessary radiometric detail for shallow bathymetry inversion applications. This technique is based on commercial and open-source software and does not require input of reference depth measurements in contrast to other approaches. The robustness of this method was tested on three different coastal sites with contrasting seafloor types. The use of suitable end-member spectra which are representative of the seafloor types of the study area and the sun zenith angle are important parameters in model tuning. The results of this study show good correlation (R2>0.7) and less than half a meter error when they are compared with sonar depth data. Consequently, integration of various drone-based imagery may be applied for producing centimetre resolution bathymetry maps at low cost for small-scale shallow areas.

Natural fibers have been widely used as a reinforcing material for the construction of drones. The main goal of this review is to identify a biodegradable natural fiber material that can be built for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). The review shows that natural fibers such as kenaf and PALF can be used as an alternative composite material, particularly for multifunctional applications where their smaller weight and less expensive characteristics make them incredibly realistic. This review also discusses the mechanical properties, advantages and disadvantages, and fabrication of the composites.

Electric energy is one of the driving forces in every country. The supply of electrical energy continues to present various challenges, such as high costs associated with procuring raw materials for generation, sparsely populated areas that are not connected to the main grid, and the need for infrastructure to support generation and network delivery. These challenges have contributed to the growing adoption of renewable energy sources, particularly solar photovoltaics (PV).In this study, we have developed a practical method to assess the spatial PV potential in a selected urban area. The methodology combines data collected from an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) photogrammetry, Geographic Information System (GIS), and the energy output from three remote photovoltaic systems installed at different locations. The results obtained from this approach not only provide the energy generated per square meter, per year (kWh m-2 yr-1), but also provides a base to calculate the potential distance that electric cars could travel based on the energy generated. To illustrate the application of this method, two practical cases were selected: Senglea, Malta, and Munxar, Gozo. These examples highlight the versatility and effectiveness of our approach for evaluating and harnessing solar energy through photovoltaic panels in different contexts.

The major goal of this paper is to use image enhancement techniques for enhancing and extracting data in FANET applications to improve the efficiency of surveillance. The proposed conceptual system design can improve the likelihood of FANET operations in oil pipeline surveillance, and sports and media coverage with the ultimate goal of providing efficient services to those who are interested. The system architecture model is based on current scientific principles and developing technologies. A FANET, which is capable of gathering image data from video-enabled drones, and an image processing system that permits data collection and analysis are the two primary components of the system. Based on the image processing technique, a proof of concept for efficient data extraction and enhancement in FANET situations and possible services is illustrated

The rampant misuse of drones poses a serious threat to national security and human life. Currently, the CNN method has been widely used in drone detection. However, there is a challenge that traditional CNN cannot cope with, which is small drone targets often have reduced amplitude or even lost features in infrared images. This paper proposes a Progressive Feature Fusion Network (PFFNet) that gradually increases the response amplitude of the target in the deep network. The Feature Selection Model (FSM) is designed to improve the utilisation of the output coding graph and enhance the feature representation of the target in the network. A lightweight segmentation head is also designed to achieve progressive feature fusion with multi-layer outputs. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can achieve low duration and high accuracy in drone target detection. On the public dataset, the IoU is improved by 2.53% and the detection time is reduced by 81.03%.

Transportation is a crucial component of supply chain management, responsible for delivering goods and services to customers. This paper explores the application of game theory concepts, precisely the Shapley value, to cost allocation in transportation operations involving drones and trucks. Our focus is on shortest-path games in which agents own nodes in a network and seek to transport items between nodes at the lowest possible cost. We provide a comprehensive literature review of the Shapley value and its use in shortest-path games, with particular emphasis on transportation networks. Our proposed model includes sets of customers, drones, and trucks and uses binary decision variables to indicate whether a drone or truck serves a given customer. The objective is to minimize the total cost of serving all customers while adhering to capacity and synchronization constraints. We use the Shapley value to determine the contribution and cost-sharing of each drone and truck in serving the customers. Through a combination of denitions, theorems, and examples, we explore the formal meaning of the Shapley value and its relationship to shortest-path games in transportation networks. We highlight exceptional cases and considerations that must be taken into account when applying the Shapley value in such scenarios.

Short-term changes in shallow bathymetry affect the coastal zone and therefore their monitoring is an essential task in coastal planning projects. This study provides a novel approach for monitoring shallow bathymetry change based on drone multispectral imagery. Particularly we apply a shallow water inversion algorithm on two composite multispectral datasets being acquired five months apart in a small Mediterranean sandy embayment (Chania, Greece). Initially, we perform radiometric corrections using proprietary software and following we combine the bands from standard and multispectral cameras resulting in a six-band composite image suitable for applying the shallow water inversion algorithm. Bathymetry inversion results showed good correlation and low errors (< 0.3m) with sonar measurements collected with an uncrewed surface vehicle (USV). Bathymetry maps and true-color orthomosaics assist in identifying morphobathymetric features representing crescentic bars with rip channel systems. The temporal bathymetry and true-color data reveal important erosional and depositional patterns, which were developed under the impact of winter storms. Furthermore, bathymetric profiles show that the crescentic bar appears to migrate across and along-shore over the 5-months period. Drone-based multispectral imagery proves to be an important and cost-effective tool for shallow seafloor mapping and monitoring when it is combined with shallow water analytical models.

In the last decade, the drone market has grown rapidly for both civil and military purposes. Due to their versatility, drones demand is constantly increasing, with several industrial players joining the venture to transfer urban mobility to the air. This has exacerbated the problem of noise pollution, mainly due to the relatively lower altitude of these vehicles and to the proximity of their routes to extremely densely populated areas. In particular, both the aerodynamic and aeroacoustic optimization of the propulsive system and of its interaction with the airframe are key aspects of the design of aerial vehicles for the success or the failure of their mission. The industrial challenge involves finding the best performance in terms of loading, efficiency and weight, and, at the same time, the most silent configuration. For this reason, research has focused on an initial localization of the noise sources and, on further analysis, of the noise generation mechanism, focusing particularly on directivity and scattering. The aim of the present study is to review the noise source mechanisms and the state-of-the-art technologies available in literature for its suppression, focusing especially on the fluid-dynamic aspects of low Reynolds numbers of the propulsive system and on the interaction of the propulsive-system flow with the airframe.

Flare stacks are a key element in the safety of petrochemical and refinery industries; the correct operating conditions thereof must be ensured through a schedule for the periodic reviewing of all parts thereof. Advances in Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) in recent years and the application thereof to this field allow reliable, objective information to be obtained. This article describes and groups together the main applicable NDT techniques, analysing their advantages and disadvantages, updated with the new possibilities offered by unmanned aircraft or drones.

The disaster response operational strategies requires tool that a may provide time bound clear picture of potential spots. Natural disaster sometimes comes slowly like increment of water level resulting flood or early warning of tsunami whereas in manmade disasters like 1CBRNE attack or chemical accident or industrial structure collapse or leakage through a pipeline of some toxic hazardous gas requires very accurate and quick response strategies. 2Unmanned Aerial System is commercially used tools present in the market and also used by military organization for various operations throughout the world. The accuracy and time bound pictorial representation of the spots by these tow tools makes them very useful for providing clear picture of potential disaster sites and enabling decision makers to take decision on these representation. Apart of these the potential to deliver important material faster than any other mode also makes these equipment and technology a very important asset for making disaster risk reduction strategies. This paper elaborates the efficacy and utility of Unmanned Aerial System or Drones in developing robust and time bound strategies for disaster risk reduction. This paper also evaluates some experiences and describes some initiatives using Unmanned Aerial System to support disaster risk reduction strategies and post disaster decision making efforts.

The use of drones for various applications has become increasingly popular in recent years, and machine learning has played a significant role in this trend. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive survey of the classification and application of machine learning in drones. The paper begins with an overview of the different types of machine learning algorithms and their applications in drones, including supervised learning, unsupervised learning, and reinforcement learning. Next, we present a detailed analysis of various real-world applications of machine learning in drones, such as object recognition, route planning, obstacle avoidance, search area optimization, and autonomous search. The paper also discusses the challenges and limitations of using machine learning in drones, such as data privacy, data quality, and computational requirements. Finally, the paper concludes with a discussion of the future directions of machine learning in drones and its potential impact on various industries and fields. This paper provides a valuable resource for researchers, practitioners, and students interested in the intersection of machine learning and drones.

In recent years, drones have been used in a wide range of fields such as agriculture, transportation of goods, and security. Drones equipped with communication facilities are expected to play an active role as base stations in areas where ground base stations are unavailable, such as disaster areas. In addition, asynchronous operation is being considered for local 5G in order to support all kinds of use cases. In asynchronous operation, cross-link interference between base stations is an issue. This paper attempts to reduce the interference caused by the drone network by introducing circularly polarized antennas. Numerical analyses are conducted to validate the effectiveness of the proposed system, where SIRs (Signal-to-Interference Ratio) are shown to be improved significantly as the numerical evaluation results.

Given the recent emergence of Rift Valley Fever (RVF) in Rwanda and its profound impact on livelihoods and health, improving RVF prevention and control strategies is crucial. Vaccinating livestock is one of the most sustainable strategies to mitigate the impact of RVF on health and livelihoods, yet vaccine supply chain constraints severely limit the effectiveness of vaccination programs. In the human health sector, unmanned aerial vehicles, i.e., drones, are increasingly being used to improve supply chains and last-mile vaccine delivery. We investigated perceptions on whether delivering RVF vaccines by drone in Rwanda might help to overcome logistical constraints in the vaccine supply chain. We conducted semi-structured interviews with stakeholders in the animal health sector and Zipline employees in Nyagatare District in the Eastern Province of Rwanda and used content analysis to identify key themes. We found that stakeholders in the animal health sector and Zipline employees believe that drones could improve RVF vaccination in Nyagatare. The main benefits study participants identified included decreased transportation time, improved cold chain maintenance, and cost savings.

Considering the actual world economical trends, one of the most important questions is now and in the future: how to reduce power consumption of electronic systems. Since the invention of computers, the electrical energy consumption step by step increased. Now when not only computers, but electric vehicles, robots, automation, and unmanned aerial vehicles play a very important role of our life, the main problem of system designers is how to reduce energy consumption in these systems. But also the existing already working systems must be revised in order to decrease their electric power consumption. The importance of this subject (energy control) shows that a huge number of research publications and survey papers deal with it. Just focusing on the last one or two years (2021 and 2022) the search hit 221000 titles (103000 hits only in 2022). Analyzing all the research areas is almost impossible, but focusing on some important research subjects, where one of the main topic is “energy saving methods” can give an overview about the subject. The paper focuses on the area of industrial robotic systems, electric vehicles, and embedded systems.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are being increasingly viewed as valuable tools to aid the management of farms. This kind of technology can be particularly useful in the context of extensive cattle farming, as production areas tend to be expansive and animals tend to be more loosely monitored. With the advent of deep learning, and Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) in particular, extracting relevant information from aerial images has become more effective. Despite the technological advancements in drone, imaging and machine learning technologies, the application of UAVs for cattle monitoring is far from being thoroughly studied, with many research gaps still remaining. In this context, the objectives of this study were threefold: 1) to determine the highest possible accuracy that could be achieved in the detection of animals of the Canchim breed, which is visually similar to the Nelore breed (\textit{Bos taurus indicus}); 2) to determine the ideal Ground Sample Distance (GSD) for animal detection; 3) to determine the most accurate CNN architecture for this specific problem. The experiments involved 1,853 images containing 8,629 samples of animals, and 15 different CNN architectures were tested. A total of 900 models were trained (15 CNN architectures * 3 spacial resolutions * 2 datasets * 10-fold cross validation), allowing for a deep analysis of the several aspects that impact the detection of cattle using aerial images captured using UAVs. Results revealed that many CNN architectures are robust enough to reliably detect animals in aerial images even under far from ideal conditions, indicating the viability of using UAVs for cattle monitoring.

Urbanization and climate change have increased the need for stormwater management and nature-based solutions. Decisions made at project level impact the emergence of systemic traits of the stormwater network and the functionality of the catchment areas in urban planning. To that end, it is vital to introduce the decision-making tools for analyzing both the utilities and amenities of nature-based solutions (NBS) to increase their adoption to reduce the peak loads in the stormwater system, and to that end, mitigate the impacts of climate change. This paper demonstrates a workflow using drone-based photogrammetry, 3D modeling, and simulation software to generate visual and functional models assisting in informed decision-making in the design of stormwater systems as functional landscape architecture. Using aerial data from drones and modeled design solutions, the proposed workflow simulates rain events, infiltration, evaporation, water flow, and accumulation of stormwater in a way that allows the visual and quantified analysis of detailed landscape architecture designs. The paper provides an example of a rooftop site simulation demonstrating the infiltration and flow of water to the drainage. The visual decision-making method provided can aid in investment decisions for functional landscape design in support of stormwater management.

Dataspaces are decentralized and open ecosystems that guarantee trustworthy and secure sharing of data among their participants. In recent years, dataspaces have gained popularity due to their design for managing and sharing heterogeneous data from various sources and domains; and their capability to incrementally solve data integration issues. Leveraging dataspace and advanced technologies plays a vital role in solving many real-world applications effectively and efficiently in real-time. Drone technology is one type of technology that can be deployed to gather data from different resources in harsh or smart environments. Beyond fifth-generation (B5G) communication networks significantly contribute to drones’ development and widespread use by providing low latency and high throughput. Therefore, data sharing among drones in B5G networks offer significant potential to enhance commercial and civilian applications. However, several security issues for collaboration and data sharing, such as data privacy leakage, because of sensitive data and the lack of trustworthy centralized monitoring. Furthermore, sharing data is one of the essential requirements for drone collaboration to achieve their tasks effectively and efficiently in real-time. This conceptual framework presents a novel dataspace in the sky, focusing on securing drone data sharing in B5G for Industry 4.0 toward Industry 5.0. We present how Federated Learning (FL) assists drones in collaboration effectively and efficiently, sharing models instead of raw data. However, because of the fragility of the central curator, the reliability of contribution recording, and the poor quality of shared local models, there are still significant security and privacy issues for drone-assisted smart environments in B5G. Therefore, we present the conceptual framework for leveraging blockchain and FL to secure and manage data sharing of collaborative drones’ dataspace in space in a decentralized fashion. The decentralisation of dataspaces would significantly expand the drive and market for the development of citizen-friendly mobility services.

In this paper the authors describe the architecture of a multidisciplinary data acquisition and visualization platform devoted to the management of coastal environments. The platform integrates heterogeneous data acquisition sub-systems that can be roughly divided in two main categories: remote sensing systems and in-situ sensing systems. Remote sensing solutions include aerial and underwater remote data acquisition while in-situ sensing solutions include the use of RFID tracers, Wireless Sensor Networks and imaging techniques. All the data collected by these subsystems are stored, integrated and fused on a single platform that is also in charge of data visualization. This last task is carried out according to the paradigm of Augmented Virtuality which foresees the augmentation of a virtually reconstructed environment with data collected in the real world. The described solution proposes a novel holistic approach where different disciplines concur, with different data acquisition techniques, to a large scale definition of coastal dynamics, in order to better describe and face the coastal erosion phenomenon. The overall framework has been conceived by the so-called Team COSTE, a joint research team between the Universities of Pisa, Siena and Florence.

The Sulfur Dioxide (SO2) compound is a primary environmental pollutant worldwide, whereas elemental Sulfur (S) is a global commodity possessing a variety of industrial as well as commercial functions. The chemical relationship between poisonous SO2 and commercially viable elemental S has motivated this investigation using Density Functional Theory calculation of the relative transition state barriers for the 2-step Dehydro-sulfurization oxidation-reduction reaction. Additionally, doubly-charged nanoscale platelet Molybdenum Disulfide (MoS2), Armchair (6,6) Carbon Nanotube, 28-atom Graphene nanoflake (GR-28), and Fullerene C-60 are utilized as catalysts. The optimal heterogeneous and homogeneous catalysis pathways of the 2-step oxidation-reduction from SO2 to elemental S are further inspired by the biomimicry of the honeybee species multi-step bio-catalysis of pollen conversion to organic honey. Potential applications include environmental depollution, the mining of elemental sulfur, and the functionalization of novel technologies such as the recently patented aerial and amphibious Lynchpin TM drones.

The Sulfur Dioxide (SO2) compound is a primary environmental pollutant worldwide, whereas elemental Sulfur (S) is a global commodity possessing a variety of industrial as well as commercial functions. The chemical relationship between poisonous SO2 and commercially viable elemental S has motivated this investigation using Density Functional Theory calculation of the relative transition state barriers for the 2-step Dehydro-sulfurization oxidation-reduction reaction. Additionally, doubly-charged nanoscale platelet Molybdenum Disulfide (MoS2), Armchair (6,6) Carbon Nanotube, 28-atom Graphene nanoflake (GR-28), and Fullerene C-60 are utilized as catalysts. The optimal heterogeneous and homogeneous catalysis pathways of the 2-step oxidation-reduction from SO2 to elemental S are further inspired by the biomimicry of the honeybee species multi-step bio-catalysis of pollen conversion to organic honey. Potential applications include environmental depollution, the mining of elemental sulfur, and the functionalization of novel technologies such as the recently patented aerial and amphibious Lynchpin TM drones.

This manuscript explores unmanned aerial vehicle DC motor control performance efficacy of deterministic artificial intelligence in comparison to model-following adaptation, particularly a direct self-tuner with filtering. The deterministic artificial intelligence model made use of self-awareness statements to overcome error in response to permutations of the multi-duty cycle square wave that served as the system input. It can be seen that (despite equivalently powerful estimation techniques) deterministic artificial intelligence provided far superior results: a reduction in peak initial transient error of 55%, and a mean error reduction over 81% with over 65% reduction in error standard deviation compared to a state-of-the-art nonlinear adaptive control method. Deterministic artificial intelligence also was able to very closely track at the switching of the input control, while the benchmark nonlinear adaptive control failed to respond as quickly at these points.

In recent years, pedestrian re-identification has gained a lot of interest due to its importance for many purposes such as security and safety. Many types of solutions have been proposed to solve this problem, where the majority are based on a features extraction such Convolution Neural Networks (CNNs). These approaches assume that only the identities that are in the training data can be recognized. The pedestrians in the training data are called In distribution (ID). However, in real world scenarios, new pedestrians and objects can appear in the scene and the model should detect them as Out Of Distribution (OOD). In our previous study , we proposed a pedestrian re-identification based on von-Mises Fisher (vMF) distribution. Each identity is embedded in the unit sphere as a compact vMF distribution far from other identities distributions. The embedding is done through a base CNN. Recently, proposed a framework called Virtual Outlier Synthetic (VOS), that detects OOD based on synthesising virtual outlier in the embedding space in an online manner. Their approach assumes that the samples from the same object maps to a compact space. This assumption aligns with the vMF based approach. Therefore, in this paper, we revisited the vMF approach and merged with VOS in order to detect OOD data points. We present our approach to merge both frameworks. We conducted several experiments to evaluate our proposed framework. Results showed that our framework was able to detect new pedestrian that do not exist in the training data in the inference phase. It also slightly helped to improve the re-identification performance.

Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS) are increasingly becoming relevant actors flying through the airspace and will assume much more importance in the future perspective. In order to allow their safe integration with manned conventional traffic in non-segregated airspaces, in accordance with the overall Air Traffic Management (ATM) paradigm, specific enabling technologies are needed. As well known, among the enabling technologies identified as crucial for RPAS integration into the overall ATM system, the Detect and Avoid (DAA) technology is fundamental. In the meantime, to support extended surveillance, the universal introduction on-board of aircraft of cooperative Automatic Dependent Surveillance – Broadcast (ADS-B) is increasingly implemented, having the potential to allow coverage of the whole airspace also in remote areas not usually covered by conventional radar surveillance. In this paper, the experimental results are presented and discussed that have been obtained through the real-time validation, with hardware and human in the loop (RTS-HIL) simulations, of an automatic ADS-B based Separation Assurance and Collision Avoidance System aimed to support RPAS automatic operations as well as remote pilot decision making. In the paper, after an introductory outline of the Concept of Operations (ConOps) of the system and of its architectural organization, while also providing basic information about the main system functionalities, the description is reported of the tests that have been carried out and the obtained results are described and discussed, in order to emphasize the performances and limitations of the proposed system. In particular, not only the quantitative performances obtained are reported and commented but also the feedbacks received by the pilots in order to improve the system are described, for instance in terms of preferred typology of conflict resolution manoeuver elaborated by the system.