PRE2016 3 Groep16

Group members

Student ID	Name
09	M.D Visser
09	G. Marzano
09	R. Schalk
09	T. Jansen
09	J. Van Galen
09	B.G.M Hopman

Introduction

This is the Wiki page for the project Robots everywhere (0LAUK0) of group 16. The subject chosen is "Detection of people by using drones equipped with IR/heat sensors and Camera". Developing such a technology would make an impact due to the several applications it carries along. In the first phase of the project, after brainstorming, the following applications emerged:

• Find refugees in open sea
• Local security and criminals detection
• Inspection of insulation materials in houses (not directly "human recognition", but considered a valuable research)

Objectives

General

• Showing that drones can be implemented in substitution of regular surveillance vehicles/cameras, consequently reducing costs and risks for operators.(Principle of Unnecessary Risk-PUR )
• Autonomous movement (User)

Application 1: Refugees search

• Reducing costs for refugee search in open sea (Society)
• Increase relative number of rescued refugees (Society)

Application 2: Surveillance & Security Drones

• Reduce the number of crimes (Society)
• Have a better understanding of crime distribution (Society)
• Make surveillance cheaper and more efficient (Enterprise & Society)
• Large scale surveillance

Application 3: Insulation in houses

• Verify heat losses in buildings
• Increased efficiency of procedure (analyze multiple living units & buildings at same time)
• Reduction of costs for maintenance and related time

Approach

General

• Determine the demands and benefits for user, society & enterprise.
• Divide group in subgroups working on different aspects of the project.
• Make a detailed planning.

Technical

• Equip the drone with a thermal camera (considering that a drone can be provided by TU/e).
• Program the drone and tune the sensors (e.g. find the threshold voltages) to detect the different values.
• Link the obtained data to an environmental structure (e.g. environment heat model).
• Adjust program in order to map properly the perimeters and consider the external heat deviations.
• Act on the environment under inspection (e.g. transmitting signal to operator).

Literature Study

For the literature study of our project the article titled ‘feasibility study of inexpensive thermal sensors and small UAS deployment for living human detection in rescue missions application scenarios’ was found. This article mentions how there are two critical phases in which geospatial imaging for rescuing purposes can be very useful. Namely for the detection of humans and secondly for the confirmation whether a detected human is dead or alive. Moreover the article elaborates on the “proof of concept for using small UAVs equipped with infrared and visible diapason sensors for detection of living humans in outdoor settings”. In which “Electro-optical imagery was used for the research in optimal human detection algorithms”.

Quite a lot of useful information about thermal imaging came forward in this research. Already in the introduction a human psychological aspect comes forward which says that “the human tendency to disregard opportunity costs when the life of identifiable individuals are visibly threatened. Due to this fact, we may observe operations when hundreds of people and multiple sets of equipment are deployed to save only one human life”. Moreover Rudol et al, already introduced human body detection via positioning algorithms using visible and infrared imagery in 2008. Follow up research in this field realized analysis algorithms that detect breathing and heartbeat rates through 15 cm of rubble.

In our research we were already aware of the fact that manned aerial vehicles for rescuing purposes are quite expensive. However something that came forward in this article and was not considered by us is that for manned aerial vehicles “very strict requirements are needed for areas of take-off and landing, and these areas are often far from the search and rescue area”. Moreover we found out that there exist several classes of UAVs, however we will adapt to the drone that can be provided by TU/e.

The research article conducted their research on human dummy objects and real humans. Experimental results showed that “various types of boundaries created by changes in feature signs such as color and texture, bringing a lot of difficulties in automated image processing. Thus, a potentially reliable algorithm needs to consider all combination of different types of image attributes together in order to provide correct segmentation of real natural images”. The conclusion following up on this result made clear that living humans can be detected in a reliable way in positive (13 °C) as well as negative (-5 °C) temperature surroundings.

Reference: Levin, E., Zarnowski, A., McCarty, J. L., Bialas, J., Banaszek, A., & Banaszek, S. (2016). Feasibility Study of Inexpensive Thermal Sensors and Small Uas Deployment for Living Human Detection in Rescue Missions Application Scenarios. ISPRS-International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, 99-103.

Planning

To organize the workload of the project a planning is required, where the main requirements and deadlines are set, together with the task division (starting from week 3 of the quartile e.g. 20th Ferbuary 2017).

Gantt chart for workload division during the project.

Logbook

Weekly the progress of the group is going to be reported in this logbook. The purpose is to keep the full group up to date with the progress of each sub group. Moreover, it is useful to be always able to compare the actual progress with the planning.

Week 2

During week 2 the group had to present the subject of the project, with the relative objectives and approach. Based on the feedback received, the group starts to focus on one of the application presented: """"""APPLICATION""

State of the art

(Boat)refugee drone Avy

The use of drones is a development that has not been around for decades. This directly implies that research on drones for application in specific domains is not largely spread and therefore there are few state-of-the-art systems that are comparable with the idea that this group wants to develop. Nevertheless, there has been developed a drone that is specifically designed for refugees. Avy is the drone that has been receiving publicity lately, as it focusses on delivering goods (a huge floater) to the refugees on open see. After dropping the floater, the location of the refugees is directly known and the emergency services can move to the area with the gathered knowledge. The weakness of this design is that the drone does not focus on the detection of refugees, as the location that is transmitted comes down to the location at which the floater is dropped. For dropping a floater, one must be able to detect the refugees by some means, as dropping a floater randomly will not help the current problem. A thermal camera, with which our design will be equipped, will ensure detection of refugees on open see, even at night conditions. Many other elements of Ivy are very hopeful and inspirational to our development, such as the design of the Avy. This design focused on traveling large distances overseas, which is not doable with a 'regular' quadcopter drone. This, however, is not directly interesting for our project, as the main focus is on the detection by using the thermal camera instead of designing a drone that is able to cover large distances. Even though the design of Avy focussed on large distance travelling on high speeds (around 200 km/h), it is still able to take-off and land vertically. Moreover, the design is fully electric driven with propulsion, able to fly (nearly) autonomously and able to carry a payload of around 10 kg.

Week 3

In preparation for the presentation of this week, the group defines the deliverables of the project

Deliverables

• A working drone equipped with thermal-sensing camera capable of detecting humans
• Complete wiki with all relevant information on the project. This includes an introduction, a context analysis (state of the art), problem statement, research with an accent on the USE perspective, and finally a conclusion with some ideas for further improvement.