The Drone Technologies and Sensing (DTS) research area combines some of the latest research from the General Engineering Research Institute (GERI) in the field of state-of-the-art drone technology, alongside well established research streams in optical measurement and sensing that have a long history of sustained research excellence.
The research area has seen huge interest in terms of an ever-widening set of applications including cultural heritage, manufacturing, civil engineering, coastal and off-shore monitoring, environmental monitoring, forensics, policing and security. Research has focused on the development of various novel Airborne Sensor Systems deployed on UAV aerial platforms, along with the design and advanced control of the drones themselves.
The group are also research coordinators and lead partners in the EC-funded Horizon2020 project, DigiArt, which uses drones to capture in 3D world heritage sites in Belgium and Greece in order to create ‘Virtual Reality Worlds’ and realise the radical new concept of the ‘Internet of Historical Things’.
Areas of current drone-related research activity include:
- New optical stereo photogrammetry techniques for precision 3D measurement from UAVs
- Development of LIDAR techniques in UAV operations
- Strategies for controlling co-operative UAV swarms to aid rapid 3D measurement
- Advanced manipulations of GNSS (GPS) systems applied to UAVs
- Applications of UAVs in cultural heritage and archaeological projects
- Aerial gas sensing using drones
- Indoor UAV mapping
- Drone use for data capture in forensic applications
