A Development of an autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) that can locate and map people in flooded areas using image processing and GPS technology

This study aims to equip an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), also called drone, with an onboard microcomputer that can perform autonomous surveying with image processing for human detection and quantification, Global Positioning System (GPS) technology for location tagging of detected people, as well as LiDAR sensors for obstacle detection to be used for obstacle avoidance to achieve an enhanced autonomous flight. A user interface for the system will also be developed to display the data being gathered by the drone, namely the detected people and their location, as well as monitor what the drone sees when in flight. This will be used to aid search and rescue operations in flooded areas and aims to speed up the victim search process. The study includes the development of the drone, the human detection and quantification model, the obstacle detection and avoidance algorithm, and the data display on a ground station’s Graphical User Interface (GUI).