Computer vision and data storage in UAVs

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) handle operations such as inspection, mapping, monitoring, and surveying, to cite a few, that assist image processing, aerial imaging, and computer vision (CV) algorithms. The UAVs with cameras collect a massive amount of images and videos for various research and commercial applications. Furthermore, UAVs have various sensors, e.g., thermal, magnetic, sound, light, and speed, to collect environment details for specific research as well as commercial usages. Thus, this chapter focuses on acquiring, storing, processing, and compressing images and videos. This chapter describes how CV software impacts tasks such as processing, communications, storage, and compression besides other applications specific to a UAV cyber-physical system (CPS). Additionally, Section 2.2 explains the general architecture of the cloud-based UAV-CPS, the challenges, and design goals. Section 2.3 discusses memory usage in UAV, specific requirements, limitations of onboard storage, and general solutions. Section 2.4 briefs the UAV data logging (DL), primary benefits, and protocol standardisation with examples. Section 2.5 grants a view of the different types of DL, requirements, and proposes solutions. Section 2.6 discusses future trends of data storage, data processing, control, the impact of big data, complexity, privacy barriers, infrastructure, and other challenges.