The HCUAV project: Electronics and software development for medium altitude remote sensing

The continuous increase of illegal migration flows to southern European countries has been recently in the spotlight of European Union due to numerous deadly incidents. Another common issue that the aforementioned countries share is the Mediterranean wildfires which are becoming more frequent due to the warming climate and increasing magnitudes of droughts. Different ground early warning systems have been funded and developed across these countries separately for these incidents, however they have been proved insufficient mainly because of the limited surveyed areas and challenging Mediterranean shoreline and landscape. In 2011, the Greek Government along with European Commission, decided to support the development of the first Hellenic Civil Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (HCUAV), which will provide solutions to both illegal migration and wildfires. This paper presents the challenges in the electronics and software design, and especially the under development solutions for detection of human and fire activity, image mosaicking and orthorectification using commercial off-the-shelf sensors. Preliminary experimental results of the HCUAV medium altitude remote sensing algorithms, show accurate and adequate results using low cost sensors and electronic devices.