Related papers: Combined Person Classification with Airborne Optic…
We show that automated person detection under occlusion conditions can be significantly improved by combining multi-perspective images before classification. Here, we employed image integration by Airborne Optical Sectioning (AOS)---a…
Drones will play an essential role in human-machine teaming in future search and rescue (SAR) missions. We present a first prototype that finds people fully autonomously in densely occluded forests. In the course of 17 field experiments…
Occlusion caused by vegetation is an essential problem for remote sensing applications in areas, such as search and rescue, wildfire detection, wildlife observation, surveillance, border control, and others. Airborne Optical Sectioning…
In this article, we evaluate unsupervised anomaly detection methods in multispectral images obtained with a wavelength-independent synthetic aperture sensing technique, called Airborne Optical Sectioning (AOS). With a focus on search and…
We present Inverse Airborne Optical Sectioning (IAOS) an optical analogy to Inverse Synthetic Aperture Radar (ISAR). Moving targets, such as walking people, that are heavily occluded by vegetation can be made visible and tracked with a…
Airborne optical sectioning, an effective aerial synthetic aperture imaging technique for revealing artifacts occluded by forests, requires precise measurements of drone poses. In this article we present a new approach for reducing pose…
Detecting and tracking moving targets through foliage is difficult, and for many cases even impossible in regular aerial images and videos. We present an initial light-weight and drone-operated 1D camera array that supports parallel…
The visual inspection of aerial drone footage is an integral part of land search and rescue (SAR) operations today. Since this inspection is a slow, tedious and error-prone job for humans, we propose a novel deep learning algorithm to…
Swarms of drones offer an increased sensing aperture, and having them mimic behaviors of natural swarms enhances sampling by adapting the aperture to local conditions. We demonstrate that such an approach makes detecting and tracking…
The advancement of autonomous drones, essential for sectors such as remote sensing and emergency services, is hindered by the absence of training datasets that fully capture the environmental challenges present in real-world scenarios,…
We demonstrate how efficient autonomous drone swarms can be in detecting and tracking occluded targets in densely forested areas, such as lost people during search and rescue missions. Exploration and optimization of local viewing…
Rescue vessels are the main actors in maritime safety and rescue operations. At the same time, aerial drones bring a significant advantage into this scenario. This paper presents the research directions of the AutoSOS project, where we work…
Reliable detection of humans beneath forest canopy remains a difficult remote-sensing challenge due to sparse, structured, and viewpoint-dependent occlusion. This paper presents a multimodal proof-of-concept pipeline that integrates three…
Previous research has shown that in the presence of foliage occlusion, anomaly detection performs significantly better in integral images resulting from synthetic aperture imaging compared to applying it to conventional aerial images. In…
A significant challenge in object detection is accurate identification of an object's position in image space, whereas one algorithm with one set of parameters is usually not enough, and the fusion of multiple algorithms and/or parameters…
Image segmentation beyond predefined categories is a key challenge in remote sensing, where novel and unseen classes often emerge during inference. Open-vocabulary image Segmentation addresses these generalization issues in traditional…
The speed of response by search and rescue teams at sea is of vital importance, as survival may depend on it. Recent technological advancements have led to the development of more efficient systems for locating individuals involved in a…
Combining synthetic aperture sonar (SAS) imagery with optical images for underwater object classification has the potential to overcome challenges such as water clarity, the stability of the optical image analysis platform, and strong…
Mapping the terrain and understory hidden beneath dense forest canopies is of great interest for numerous applications such as search and rescue, trail mapping, forest inventory tasks, and more. Existing solutions rely on specialized…
Current mainstream SAR image object detection methods still lack robustness when dealing with unknown objects in open environments. Open-set detection aims to enable detectors trained on a closed set to detect all known objects and identify…