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The Performance Assessment Of A Small Lighter-Than-Air Vehicle For Earth Science Remote Sensing Missions, Maxwell F. Burtis
The Performance Assessment Of A Small Lighter-Than-Air Vehicle For Earth Science Remote Sensing Missions, Maxwell F. Burtis
Honors College
This summer, a lighter-than-air (LTA) drone was tested in Alaska to measure glacier bedrock fracture density and orientation. Five flights were made in low wind conditions, and the directional stability of the airship made it too challenging to control in flight to realistically acquire useful image sets. The directional stability of the airship, when compared to an actively stabilized consumer-grade quadcopter was inferior. Flight logs and GPS data from the GPS on the LTA drone were analyzed and a quantitative assessment of the observed instability was made. The yaw axis and pitch were analyzed, and the yaw axis instability was …
Impact Of Uav Hardware Options On Bridge Inspection Mission Capabilities, Zahra Ameli, Yugandhar Aremanda, Wilhelm A. Friess, Eric N. Landis
Impact Of Uav Hardware Options On Bridge Inspection Mission Capabilities, Zahra Ameli, Yugandhar Aremanda, Wilhelm A. Friess, Eric N. Landis
Civil Engineering Faculty Scholarship
Uncrewed Aerial Vehicles (UAV) constitute a rapidly evolving technology field that is becoming more accessible and capable of supplementing, expanding, and even replacing some traditionally manual bridge inspections. Given the classification of the bridge inspection types as initial, routine, in-depth, damage, special, and fracture critical members, specific UAV mission requirements can be developed, and their suitability for UAV application examined. Results of a review of 23 applications of UAVs in bridge inspections indicate that mission sensor and payload needs dictate the UAV configuration and size, resulting in quadcopter configurations being most suitable for visual camera inspections (43% of visual inspections …