Unmanned Aerial Vehicles as MobileMulti-sensor Platforms

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) equipped with multiple sensors publish data in unpredictable manner using considerable bandwidth and missing spatial reference. Additionally, the available approaches only provide proprietary access to the data. Integrating sensors from UAVs into a synchronized data stream is required for publishing the transmitted data on the Web. This article describes a software framework, which simplifies such integration. In particular, it synchronizes registered sensor data streams and attaches a spatial reference through a geotagging mechanism. Moreover, the resulting data is published on the Web and made accessible in an interoperable way using Sensor Web technology. The presented framework is applied to a multi-sensor equipped UAV for a real-world scenario exploring the surface-near atmosphere of the earth.