Finding Smoothness Area on the Topographic Maps for the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle's Landing Site Estimation

Abstract

In this study, determining of the suitable landing areas on the topographical maps were determined for emergency landing of the Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAVs) during flight. In order to reach desired goals of this work, Shuttle radar topography mission maps (SRTM) was used. Nowodays, UA V have been intensively used in civillian and military applications. There are urgent needs on increasing of autonomy of the UAVs, decreasing human expertise and making smarter of UA V systems has become an inevitable necessity. Unexpectable stiuations (i.e. motor or comminatication failure, etc ... ) can arise while missions of the UAV. Emergency landing system must be activated by autonomously and then landed on the ground in safely while occuring some failure mentioned above. Two different techniques were chosed for determining probable landing areas by using digital elevation maps (SRTM). Firstly, surface fitting approximation was applied by using Least Squares Error (LSE). The slope of the points were calculated to specify of the smoothness rate of the landing areas. Smooth areas were signed by using SRTM datas. Image processing techniques were utilized for marking of the smooth areas and determinig boundries of the landing areas. The smooth landing areas were groupped with Blob analysis. The noise of the ground specified as landing areas were reduced with morphological image processing (performs morphological openning). UAVs system can be made smarter with specifying of the landing areas and planning of the path according to emergency cases. With designed systems, the UA V could be guided to the suitable landing zones vice versa undesirable areas by limiting of the landing path in the emergency cases of the UAV.