Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
There are different constructions of UAVs. Planes and helicopters are the best known of them, but also there are airships, nanohelicopters (fit in the palm) and even airplanes, powered by solar batteries. Recently UAVs are used increasingly for operational remote sensing (aerial survey). Specialized systems or multipurpose UAV systems are created for this purpose. Ultra-light and light classes of UAVs are preferred for the rapid aerial survey, because they do not require airports or specially prepared sites.
Unmanned aerial vehicles are usually classified according to the interrelated parameters such as mass, time, distance and altitude.
More details
Classes of vehicles:
- ultra-light — weight up to 10 kg, the flight time of about 1 hour, altitude up to 1 km;
- light — weight up to 50 kg, the flight time of several hours, altitude up to 3-5km;
- medium — weight up to 1000 kg, the flight time 10-12 h, altitude up to 9-10 km;
- heavy — altitude up to 20 km, flight time is more than 24 hours.
It is important to note that ultralight UAVs can’t be equipped with sophisticated precision survey system, because they are severely limited in weight of the payload. Furthermore, these devices are highly susceptible to the influence of weather conditions (for example the UAV with weigh 2 kg can be used at a wind’s speed up to 10m/s). However, the equipment of such devices provides successful and efficient survey for the purpose of real-time monitoring of floods, fires and others.
In addition, the price of such system is very attractive. To perform high-precise aerial survey it is desirable to use light and medium classes of vehicles, as they can be equipped with more advanced photographic and stabilizing equipment. It should be noted, that the improvement of production the miniature sensors caused the development of the UAVs.
Aerial survey from UAVs, equipped with the appropriate survey system allows getting digital images with high spatial resolution of up to 4 cm. Depending on the type of camera images may be used for:
- Primary Analysis of the areas;
- Analysis and control of the terrain changes;
- Searching facilities;
- Creating new and updating existing orthophotos;
- Determination the coordinates of objects.
Unmanned aerial systems (UAS) include not only the vehicle (UAV), but the entire ground infrastructure, which is designed for machine control and data reception. The company "Sovzond" supplies vehicles of the variety of domestic and foreign manufacturers.
Unmanned aerial vehicles GEOSCAN