Unmanned aerial vehicles as mobile multi-sensor platforms

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) equipped with multiple sensors publish data in unpre-dictable manner using considerable bandwidth and missing spatial reference. Additionally, the availa-ble approaches only provide proprietary access to the data. Integrating sensors from UAVs into a synchronized data stream is required for publishing the transmitted data on the Web. This article describes a software framework, which simplifies such integration. In particular, it synchronizes registered sensor data streams and attaches a spatial reference through a geotagging mechanism. Moreover, the resulting data is published on the Web and made accessible in an interoperable way using Sensor Web technology. The presented framework is applied to a multi-sensor equipped UAV for a real-world scenario exploring the surface-near atmosphere of the earth.