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Drones
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Advances in Civil Applications of Unmanned Aircraft Systems: 2nd Edition
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Advances in Civil Applications of Unmanned Aircraft Systems: 2nd Edition

A special issue of Drones (ISSN 2504-446X).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 25 March 2025 | Viewed by 2263

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Higinio González Jorge

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Engineering Physics Group, School of Aerospace Engineering, University of Vigo, Campus Ourense, 32004 Ourense, Spain
Interests: infrastructure maintenance; NDT; UAV; geospatial technology
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Fernando Veiga López

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Aerospace & Transportation Systems Laboratory (AEROLAB), School of Aerospace Engineering, University of Vigo, Ourense, Spain
Interests: drones; avionics; fluid dynicamcs
Enrique Aldao Pensado

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor Assistant
Aerospace & Transportation Systems Laboratory (AEROLAB), School of Aerospace Engineering, University of Vigo, Ourense, Spain
Interests: drones; navigation systems; artificial intelligence
Gabriel Fontenla-Carrera

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor Assistant
Aerospace & Transportation Systems Laboratory (AEROLAB), School of Aerospace Engineering, University of Vigo, Ourense, Spain
Interests: drones; navigation systems; artificial intelligence

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Drones have emerged over the past decade as a fundamental tool in various civil applications including, among other uses, the inspection of complex structures such as viaducts or wind turbines, professional image and video operations, the monitoring of agricultural fields and forest masses, controlling pollution in bodies of water, serving as logistical tools in remote locations, enabling topographical operations, and contributing to search and rescue missions. There are a multitude of aircraft designs, including fixed-wing or rotary-wing, various types of payloads, propulsion systems, etc. Additionally, there are many instances where unmanned aircraft collaborate with other aircraft, swarms, or other unmanned vehicles, whether land- or sea-based. The regulatory aspects and their evolution over the past years have also proven to be crucial in this context, accompanying the development of the sector.

The goal of this Special Issue is to collect papers (original research articles and review papers) to give insights about varios applications across a broad spectrum of unmanned aicraft in the civil sector. This Special Issue will welcome manuscripts that link the following themes:

- Drone applications in infrastructure monitoring;

- Drone design, aerodynamics, propulsion, payloads, guidance, navigation, and control;

- Drone applications in agriculture management;

- Drone applications in marine environment;

- Drone applications in forestry management;

- Drone applications in surveying;

- Drone in logistics;

- Drone regulation;

- Drone swarms;

- Drones working in collaboration with sea-based and land-based unmanned systems;

- Drone mitigation from the civil side (e.g., critical infrastructure such as airports);

- Drones in education.

We look forward to receiving your original research articles and reviews.

Dr. Higinio González Jorge
Dr. Fernando Veiga López
Guest Editors

Eng. Enrique Aldao Pensado
Eng. Gabriel Fontenla-Carrera
Guest Editorial Assistants

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Drones is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • drones
  • surveying
  • unmanned aircraft systems
  • regulations
  • swarm
  • photogrammetry
  • remote sensing
  • earth observation
  • guidance, navigation, and control
  • aerodynamics

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Further information on MDPI's Special Issue polices can be found here.

Related Special Issue

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

23 pages, 7403 KiB  
Article
Integrating Drone-Based LiDAR and Multispectral Data for Tree Monitoring
by Beatrice Savinelli, Giulia Tagliabue, Luigi Vignali, Roberto Garzonio, Rodolfo Gentili, Cinzia Panigada and Micol Rossini
Drones 2024, 8(12), 744; https://doi.org/10.3390/drones8120744 - 10 Dec 2024
Viewed by 133
Abstract
Forests are critical for providing ecosystem services and contributing to human well-being, but their health and extent are threatened by climate change, requiring effective monitoring systems. Traditional field-based methods are often labour-intensive, costly, and logistically challenging, limiting their use for large-scale applications. Drones [...] Read more.
Forests are critical for providing ecosystem services and contributing to human well-being, but their health and extent are threatened by climate change, requiring effective monitoring systems. Traditional field-based methods are often labour-intensive, costly, and logistically challenging, limiting their use for large-scale applications. Drones offer advantages such as low operating costs, versatility, and rapid data collection. However, challenges remain in optimising data processing and methods to effectively integrate the acquired data for forest monitoring. This study addresses this challenge by integrating drone-based LiDAR and multispectral data for forest species classification and health monitoring. We developed the methodology in Ticino Park (Italy), where intensive field campaigns were conducted in 2022 to collect tree species compositions, the leaf area index (LAI), canopy chlorophyll content (CCC), and drone data. Individual trees were first extracted from LiDAR data and classified using spectral and textural features derived from the multispectral data, achieving an accuracy of 84%. Key forest traits were then retrieved from the multispectral data using machine learning regression algorithms, which showed satisfactory performance in estimating the LAI (R2 = 0.83, RMSE = 0.44 m2 m−2) and CCC (R2 = 0.80, RMSE = 0.33 g m−2). The retrieved traits were used to track species-specific changes related to drought. The results obtained highlight the potential of integrating drone-based LiDAR and multispectral data for cost-effective and accurate forest health monitoring and change detection. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Civil Applications of Unmanned Aircraft Systems: 2nd Edition)
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21 pages, 9235 KiB  
Article
Feature-Enhanced Attention and Dual-GELAN Net (FEADG-Net) for UAV Infrared Small Object Detection in Traffic Surveillance
by Tuerniyazi Aibibu, Jinhui Lan, Yiliang Zeng, Weijian Lu and Naiwei Gu
Drones 2024, 8(7), 304; https://doi.org/10.3390/drones8070304 - 8 Jul 2024
Viewed by 1225
Abstract
With the rapid development of UAV and infrared imaging technology, the cost of UAV infrared imaging technology has decreased steadily. Small target detection technology in aerial infrared images has great potential for applications in many fields, especially in the field of traffic surveillance. [...] Read more.
With the rapid development of UAV and infrared imaging technology, the cost of UAV infrared imaging technology has decreased steadily. Small target detection technology in aerial infrared images has great potential for applications in many fields, especially in the field of traffic surveillance. Because of the low contrast and relatively limited feature information in infrared images compared to visible images, the difficulty involved in small road target detection in infrared aerial images has increased. To solve this problem, this study proposes a feature-enhanced attention and dual-GELAN net (FEADG-net) model. In this network model, the reliability and effectiveness of small target feature extraction is enhanced by a backbone network combined with low-frequency enhancement and a swin transformer. The multi-scale features of the target are fused using a dual-GELAN neck structure, and a detection head with the parameters of the auto-adjusted InnerIoU is constructed to improve the detection accuracy for small infrared targets. The viability of the method was proved using the HIT-UAV dataset and IRTS-AG dataset. According to a comparative experiment, the mAP50 of FEADG-net reached more than 90 percent, which was higher than that of any previous method and it met the real-time requirements. Finally, an ablation experiment was conducted to demonstrate that all three of the modules proposed in the method contributed to the improvement in the detection accuracy. This study not only designs a new algorithm for small road object detection in infrared remote sensing images from UAVs but also provides new ideas for small target detection in remote sensing images for other fields. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Civil Applications of Unmanned Aircraft Systems: 2nd Edition)
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