Date of Award

Fall 2008

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Electrical & Computer Engineering

Program/Concentration

Electrical Engineering

Committee Director

Zia-ur Rahman

Committee Member

Vijayan Asari

Committee Member

Frederic D. McKenzie

Call Number for Print

Special Collections LD4331.E55 V563 2008

Abstract

With increasing terrorist attacks around the world, detection of hidden bombs like IEDs (Improvised Explosive devices) has become very important. The main aim of this thesis is to develop an automatic change detection system to detect changes in terrain. It is mainly used in military applications for protection of military convoys. In order to detect the presence of IED's, an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) is flown over a proposed convoy route to develop a baseline scene. Prior to the launch of the convoy the UA V is flown again over the same route to detect any significant scene changes that might be able to help with the detection of IEDs. The data collected would be monitored to check for the presence of any explosive devices.

The two main sources of data that have been provided by NASA are the data recorded by the micropilot and the data from the camera that is attached to the UAV. The autopilot used for this research is Micropilot 2028 (MP2028g). The data from the micropilot is downloaded in the form of a telemetry file and is available after the flight is complete. When the UAV is flying at a high altitude, it is subjected to wind gusts and air turbulence. Thus, the UA V experiences some orientation changes with respect to the horizon. Hence, the data needs to be corrected for the various changes that affect the data recorded by the micropilot. Affine transformations are performed on the micropilot data and then, based on certain selection criteria, a few image frames are selected. We then perform various transformations along with interpolation on those selected image frames. The results are then verified based on the differences obtained. Hence, a detection system is implemented that can detect whether an object has been placed in the terrain between flight passes.

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DOI

10.25777/jhb6-na95

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