A methodology of UAV route planning for fast image mosaicking

Losses caused by various disasters are continuing to rise as the global disasters frequently occur in recent years. In order to reduce the losses, UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) technologies are increasingly employed in the emergency management field. Rapid emergency response has a strong demand for fast UAV image processing, while image mosaicking is one of the most important requirements. Whether an UAV route is appropriately designed has significant effects on the quality of UAV collected images, the mosaicking efficiency, and stability. In this paper, fast image mosaicking technologies for emergency management are introduced and its practical problems during image processing are analyzed. Based on that, an UAV route planning mathematical model is proposed which is used for fast image mosaicking. The given model considers three different approaches covering most of UAV flight task situations.