Drone Vision and Deep Learning for

Infrastructure Inspection
Abstract:
This lecture overviews the use of drones for infrastructure inspection and
maintenance. Various types of inspection, e.g., using visual cameras, LIDAR
or thermal cameras are reviewed. Drone vision plays a pivotal role in drone
perception/control for infrastructure inspection and maintenance, because: a)
it enhances flight safety by drone localization/mapping, obstacle detection and
emergency landing detection; b) performs quality visual data acquisition, and
c) allows powerful drone/human interactions, e.g., through automatic event
detection and gesture control. The drone should have: a) increased multiple
drone decisional autonomy and b) improved multiple drone robustness and
safety mechanisms (e.g., communication robustness/safety, embedded flight
regulation compliance, enhanced crowd avoidance and emergency landing
mechanisms). Therefore, it must be contextually aware and adaptive. Drone
vision and machine learning play a very important role towards this end,
covering the following topics: a) semantic world mapping b) drone and target
localization, c) drone visual analysis for target/obstacle/crowd/point of interest
detection, d) 2D/3D target tracking. Finally, embedded on-drone vision (e.g.,
tracking) and machine learning algorithms are extremely important, as they
facilitate drone autonomy, e.g., in communication-denied environments.
Primary application area is electric line inspection. Line detection and tracking
and drone perching are examined. Human action recognition and co-working
assistance are overviewed.The lecture will offer: a) an overview of all the
above plus other related topics and will stress the related algorithmic aspects,
such as: b) drone localization and world mapping, c) target detection d) target
tracking and 3D localization e) gesture control and co-working with humans.
Some issues on embedded CNN and fast convolution computing will be
overviewed as well.

Published in: 2021 IEEE International Conference on Autonomous Systems

(ICAS)
Date of Conference: 11-13 August 2021
Date Added to IEEE Xplore: 06 October 2021
ISBN Information:
INSPEC Accession Number: 21201458
DOI: 10.1109/ICAS49788.2021.9551136
Publisher: IEEE
Conference Location: Montreal, QC, Canada