Development of an UAV for water surface survey using video images

Water is an important resource especially for agricultural country like Thailand. Hydro and Agro Informatics Institute of Thailand launched a project which introduces UAVs equipped with video cameras for improvement of the efficiency in water resource survey. This paper presents the UAV system that has been developed in this project. The flight data shows the capability of accurate automatic way-point flight. Histogram-based image segmentation was applied to the aerial image for the purpose of estimation of water surface area in order to show the usefulness of the UAV system. The estimation results are evaluated and discussed.