A new era of remote sensing has emerged with the arrival of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for civil applications, especially in small area imaging, monitoring and analysis. Advances in miniaturisation of instrumentation enabled development of several robust, light-weight and autonomous sensors that can be easily installed into these microcrafts. Initiating with a simple visible-RGB camera, these mini-imagers have progressed to include sensing in multiple spectral regions of the electromagnetic spectrum, both in the reflected and emitted regions, which are useful for remote sensing. With an interest in expanding the scope of applications of UAV in forestry beyond the use of orthomosaics/simple mapping and 3D modeling with an RGB camera, FPInnovations wished to have a first impression of the new radiometric cameras that are commercially available in the market. Radiometric cameras accurately measure irradiance, illuminance or reflectance from an object that can help in detecting features on the image characteristics (e.g. vegetation) like vigor, stress, moisture, temperature.
Most often UAV data is acquired to have a single overview of the area of interest through stitching of several images that are corrected for the terrain/topographic effects called ortho-mosaicking. This requires post-processing of the data using specialized software. Terrain is estimated from 3D point clouds generated through photogrammetric procedures (image matching) on the overlapping images. There are multiple challenges associated with processing of imagery acquired using a UAV for generating an orthomosaic.
Recent technological advances in the area of Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) have led to affordable and flexible solutions for planning forest operations and monitoring compliance. The report reviews the technology in a forestry context. It presents an overview of UAS and its components, provides information on current regulations and identifies key features for forestry applications. [This is the French version of the report. It is also available in English]
Abstract
Les progrès technologiques récents des systèmes d’aéronef télépiloté (SAT) permettent d’offrir des solutions abordables et flexibles pour la planification des opérations forestières et les suivis de conformité. Le rapport examine la technologie dans un contexte forestier. Il présente un aperçu des SAT et leurs composantes, fournit des informations sur la réglementation courante et identifie des caractéristiques importantes pour les applications forestières.
Recent technological advances in the area of Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) have led to affordable and flexible solutions for planning forest operations and monitoring compliance. The report reviews the technology in a forestry context. It presents an overview of UAS and its components, provides information on current regulations and identifies key features for forestry applications.
Abstract
Les progrès technologiques récents des systèmes d’aéronef télépiloté (SAT) permettent d’offrir des solutions abordables et flexibles pour la planification des opérations forestières et les suivis de conformité. Le rapport examine la technologie dans un contexte forestier. Il présente un aperçu des SAT et leurs composantes, fournit des informations sur la réglementation courante et identifie des caractéristiques importantes pour les applications forestières. [Ce document est l'édition anglaise. Il est auusi disponible en français]
