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University of Nebraska - Lincoln

Drone

Articles 1 - 11 of 11

Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Investigating Nocturnal Uas Treatments In An Applied Context To Prevent Gulls From Nesting On Rooftops, Morgan Pfeiffer, Craig K. Pullins, Scott F. Beckerman, Joshua L. Hoblet, Brad Blackwell Jan 2023

Investigating Nocturnal Uas Treatments In An Applied Context To Prevent Gulls From Nesting On Rooftops, Morgan Pfeiffer, Craig K. Pullins, Scott F. Beckerman, Joshua L. Hoblet, Brad Blackwell

USDA Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Ring‐billed (Larus delawarensis) and herring (L. argentatus) gulls are numerous and widespread in North America. These gulls rank among the top 9 species for risk of bird‐aircraft collisions (hereafter strikes). The ubiquitous presence of gulls in urban coastal environments, including rooftop nesting behavior, are factors impacting strike risk. Our purpose was to assess gull response to a small uncrewed aircraft system (UAS) in hazing flights at night during the nest‐building phase. We hypothesized that nocturnal UAS operation, like nocturnal predator disturbance, might reduce gull numbers and, thus, strike risk to aircraft. In spring 2021, we conducted …

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Characterizing And Predicting Human Visual Perception Of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Gestures, Paul Fletcher Apr 2022

Characterizing And Predicting Human Visual Perception Of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Gestures, Paul Fletcher

Department of Computer Science and Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are being used in public domains and hazardous environments where effective communication strategies are critical. UAV gesture techniques have been shown to communicate meaning to human observers and may be ideal in contexts that require lightweight systems such as unmanned aerial flight, however, this work may be limited to an idealized range of viewer perspectives. As gesture is a visual communication technique it is necessary to consider how the perception of a robot gesture may suffer from obfuscation or self-occlusion from some viewpoints. This thesis presents the results of three online user-studies that examine participants’ ability …

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Aerial Flight Paths For Communication, Alisha Bevins, Brittany Duncan Dec 2021

Aerial Flight Paths For Communication, Alisha Bevins, Brittany Duncan

School of Computing: Faculty Publications

This article presents an understanding of naive users’ perception of the communicative nature of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) motions refined through an iterative series of studies. This includes both what people believe the UAV is trying to communicate, and how they expect to respond through physical action or emotional response. Previous work in this area prioritized gestures from participants to the vehicle or augmenting the vehicle with additional communication modalities, rather than communicating without clear definitions of the states attempting to be conveyed. In an attempt to elicit more concrete states and better understand specific motion perception, this work includes …

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Assessing Deep Convection Initiation In A Mountain-Valley System Using Unoccupied Aircraft System Observations, Alexander Erwin Nov 2021

Assessing Deep Convection Initiation In A Mountain-Valley System Using Unoccupied Aircraft System Observations, Alexander Erwin

Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Forecasts of the timing and location of deep convection are inadequate, as are scientists’ understanding of the dominant controlling mechanisms. The Lower Atmosphere Process Studies at Elevation, a Remotely-piloted Aircraft Team Experiment (LAPSE-RATE) field campaign, which took place in the San Luis Valley (SLV) of Colorado during July 2018, aimed to use in-situ observations to develop a deeper understanding of the processes relevant to deep convection initiation (DCI). The campaign resulted in a unique dataset, collected by a network of unoccupied aircraft systems (UAS) in a unique geographic setting, which can be used to examine the impact of terrain and …

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Improving Animal Monitoring Using Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (Suas) And Deep Learning Networks, Meilun Zhou, Jared A. Elmore, Sathishkumar Samiappan, Kristine O. Evans, Morgan Pfeiffer, Bradley F. Blackwell, Raymond B. Iglay Sep 2021

Improving Animal Monitoring Using Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (Suas) And Deep Learning Networks, Meilun Zhou, Jared A. Elmore, Sathishkumar Samiappan, Kristine O. Evans, Morgan Pfeiffer, Bradley F. Blackwell, Raymond B. Iglay

USDA Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

In recent years, small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS) have been used widely to monitor animals because of their customizability, ease of operating, ability to access difficult to navigate places, and potential to minimize disturbance to animals. Automatic identification and classification of animals through images acquired using a sUAS may solve critical problems such as monitoring large areas with high vehicle traffic for animals to prevent collisions, such as animal-aircraft collisions on airports. In this research we demonstrate automated identification of four animal species using deep learning animal classification models trained on sUAS collected images. We used a sUAS mounted with …

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Power-Over-Tether Unmanned Aerial System Leveraged For Trajectory Influenced Atmospheric Sensing, Daniel Rico Aug 2021

Power-Over-Tether Unmanned Aerial System Leveraged For Trajectory Influenced Atmospheric Sensing, Daniel Rico

Department of Computer Science and Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The use of unmanned aerial systems (UASs) in agriculture has risen in the past decade and is helping to modernize agriculture. UASs collect and elucidate data previously difficult to obtain and are used to help increase agricultural efficiency and production. Typical commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) UASs are limited by small payloads and short flight times. Such limits inhibit their ability to provide abundant data at multiple spatiotemporal scales. In this thesis, we describe the design and construction of the tethered aircraft unmanned system (TAUS), which is a novel power-over-tether UAS configured for long-term, high throughput atmospheric monitoring with an array of …

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Aerial Flight Paths For Communication, Alisha Bevins Aug 2021

Aerial Flight Paths For Communication, Alisha Bevins

Department of Computer Science and Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This body of work presents an iterative process of refinement to understand naive perception of communication using the motion of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). This includes what people believe the UAV is trying to communicate, and how they expect to respond through physical action or emotional response. Previous work in this area sought to communicate without clear definitions of the states attempting to be conveyed. In an attempt to present more concrete states and better understand specific motion perception, this work goes through multiple iterations of state elicitation and label assignment. The lessons learned in this work will be …

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Evidence On The Effectiveness Of Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (Suas) As A Survey Tool For North American Terrestrial, Vertebrate Animals: A Systematic Map Protocol, Jared A. Elmore, Michael F. Curran, Kristine O. Evans, Sathishkumar Samiappan, Meilun Zhou, Morgan B. Pfeiffer, Bradley F. Blackwell, Raymond B. Iglay Jan 2021

Evidence On The Effectiveness Of Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (Suas) As A Survey Tool For North American Terrestrial, Vertebrate Animals: A Systematic Map Protocol, Jared A. Elmore, Michael F. Curran, Kristine O. Evans, Sathishkumar Samiappan, Meilun Zhou, Morgan B. Pfeiffer, Bradley F. Blackwell, Raymond B. Iglay

USDA Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Background: Small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS) are replacing or supplementing manned aircraft and groundbased surveys in many animal monitoring situations due to better coverage at finer spatial and temporal resolutions, access, cost, bias, impacts, safety, efficiency, and logistical benefits. Various sUAS models and sensors are available with varying features and usefulness depending on survey goals. However, justification for selection of sUAS and sensors are not typically offered in published literature and existing reviews do not adequately cover past and current sUAS applications for animal monitoring nor their associated sUAS model and sensor technologies, taxonomic and geographic scope, flight conditions and …

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Testing A Drone-Based Magnetic Field Surveying System, Erik Jacobson, Irina Filina Apr 2020

Testing A Drone-Based Magnetic Field Surveying System, Erik Jacobson, Irina Filina

UCARE Research Products

Aeromagnetic surveys are conducted by geoscientists to study subsurface geologic structures, such as faults. This type of survey uses a magnetometer mounted upon an airborne vehicle to collect magnetic field data. Magnetic anomalies are caused by variations in subsurface geology, namely in magnetic properties of subsurface rocks. Jacobson and Filina (2019) reported on the development of a new low cost drone, based magnetic field surveying system by the UNL Geophysics Team. This drone-based magnetic system is capable of collecting high resolution data at low speeds and low altitudes. The current study focuses on testing this system by conducting two flights …

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Estimating Waterbird Abundance On Catfish Aquaculture Ponds Using An Unmanned Aerial System, Paul C. Burr, Sathishkumar Samiappan, Lee A. Hathcock, Robert J. Moorhead, Brian S. Dorr Oct 2019

Estimating Waterbird Abundance On Catfish Aquaculture Ponds Using An Unmanned Aerial System, Paul C. Burr, Sathishkumar Samiappan, Lee A. Hathcock, Robert J. Moorhead, Brian S. Dorr

USDA Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

In this study, we examined the use of an unmanned aerial system (UAS) to monitor fish-eating birds on catfish (Ictalurus spp.) aquaculture facilities in Mississippi, USA. We tested 2 automated computer algorithms to identify bird species using mosaicked imagery taken from a UAS platform. One algorithm identified birds based on color alone (color segmentation), and the other algorithm used shape recognition (template matching), and the results of each algorithm were compared directly to manual counts of the same imagery. We captured digital imagery of great egrets (Ardea alba), great blue herons (A. herodias), and doublecrested cormorants (Phalacrocorax auritus) on aquaculture …

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Use Of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (Uas) And Multispectral Imagery For Quantifying Agricultural Areas Damaged By Wild Pigs, Justin W. Fischer, Kelsey Greiner, Mark W. Lutman, Bryson L. Webber, Kurt C. Vercauteren Jun 2019

Use Of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (Uas) And Multispectral Imagery For Quantifying Agricultural Areas Damaged By Wild Pigs, Justin W. Fischer, Kelsey Greiner, Mark W. Lutman, Bryson L. Webber, Kurt C. Vercauteren

USDA Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Wild pigs (Sus scrofa) cause extensive damage to agricultural crops, resulting in lost production and income. A major challenge associated with assessing damage to crops is locating and quantifying damaged areas within agricultural fields. We evaluated a novel method using multispectral high-resolution aerial imagery, collected from sensors mounted on unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), and feature extraction techniques to detect and map areas of corn fields damaged by wild pigs in southern Missouri, USA. Damaged areas were extracted from orthomosaics using visible and near-infrared band combinations, an object-based classification approach, and hierarchical learning cycles. To validate estimates we also collected ground …

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