Image Processing Workflow for the Pegasus Hale Uav Payload

The PEGASUS High-Altitude Long-Endurance (HALE) Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) system has two major operational modes: (a) large-scale regional photogrammetric and environmental mapping and (b) near real time event monitoring. Given the concept of the HALE UAV camera design (decimetre resolution RGB), a massive data stream of about 0.5 to 1.0 TB/day is expected. The Central Data Processing Centre (CDPC) installed at VITO shall archive the incoming image data into self-descriptive Level1 HDF5 files containing all metadata for further processing. At the CDPC the Level1 data can be further processed towards higher levels upon user request. Typical standard products can be: orthorectified and atmospheric corrected single images (Level2) and orthophoto mosaics (Level3). Upon user request, custom product generation schemes can be integrated in the product generation workflow. This paper presents an overview of the CDPC with respect to the user requirements, product levels, functional flow, hardware system, workflow design, algorithmic components and product distribution issues.