Generation of digital surface temperature model from thermal images collected by thermal sensor on quadcopter UAV

Abstract

Thermal infrared images show the temperature change of sensed scenes. Therefore, thermal infrared camera can sense some important information that optical digital cameras cannot do for the environment monitoring. With the development of UASs (Unmanned Aircraft Systems), the thermal infrared sensor can be carried on the Quadcopter UAV (Unmanned Aircraft Vehicle) to collect thermal images with high resolution in a local area more efficiently for different application, such as environmental quality monitoring. Therefore, in this study, the Quadcopter UAS for thermal image collection will be developed. FIIR Tau 640 thermal infrared sensor will be used in this thermal image collection system. Additionally, the Trimble BD970 GNSS OEM board will be carried on the Quadcopter UAV to collect dual-frequency GPS observations for determining the flying trajectory by Post-processed kinematic (PPK) technique to support the positioning and orientating of collected thermal images. The used FLIR Tau 640 has only the image resolution with 640 × 480 pixels, therefore the approaches to collecting thermal images with enough overlaps for environment quality monitoring will be investigated and determined. Beside the above-mentioned problem, the procedure for the orthorectification of collected thermal images will be also discussed. All in all, the relevant problems for the development of the Quadcopter UAS for thermal image collection will be deeply investigated and resolved. This study is hoped to develop another important UAS system to collect thermal images for different applications, such as environment quality monitoring, in the future.