Aerial Image Acquisition and Processing for Remote Sensing

UAV (Unmanned Airborne Vehicle) high resolution digital image acquisition systems based on small format cameras provide a versatile alternative to the solution of environmental monitoring and remote sensing problems. Through digital image processing these small format optical and multi-spectral camera images can obtain ortho-mosaics that meet quality standards at a fraction of the cost of traditional heavier manned vehicle equipment. They also have higher availability, resolution and flexibility can also be obtained when compared to satellite images. This paper presents research and development undertaken to produce a computational system that can automatically process optical and multi-spectral images obtained from digital cameras mounted on a UAV aircraft.