Citation

Martínez-de Dios JR, Merino L, Caballero F, Ollero A. Sensors (Basel) 2011; 11(6): 6328-6353.

Affiliation

Robotics, Computer Vision and Control Group, Universidad de Sevilla, Seville, 41092, Spain; E-Mails: fcaballero@us.es (F.C.); aollero@cartuja.us.es (A.O.).

Copyright

(Copyright © 2011, MDPI: Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute)

DOI

10.3390/s110606328

PMID

22163958

PMCID

PMC3231446

Abstract

This paper presents a novel system for automatic forest-fire measurement using cameras distributed at ground stations and mounted on Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS). It can obtain geometrical measurements of forest fires in real-time such as the location and shape of the fire front, flame height and rate of spread, among others. Measurement of forest fires is a challenging problem that is affected by numerous potential sources of error. The proposed system addresses them by exploiting the complementarities between infrared and visual cameras located at different ground locations together with others onboard Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS). The system applies image processing and geo-location techniques to obtain forest-fire measurements individually from each camera and then integrates the results from all the cameras using statistical data fusion techniques. The proposed system has been extensively tested and validated in close-to-operational conditions in field fire experiments with controlled safety conditions carried out in Portugal and Spain from 2001 to 2006.

Language: en