Selection of Landing Position for Sensor Device Installation Using Drone Considering a Prospect and Ground Conditions

Abstract

When a volcano erupts, the area around the volcano's crater is restricted to off-limits areas according to the eruption warning level, which prevents people from conducting a detailed investigation near the crater. Therefore, our research group has been researching and developing sensor devices transported and deployed in the restricted area. Previous research has used topographic data for the sensor device's safety landing to choose flat terrain with no plant. This method does not consider the visibility to the observation target when the sensor device is an observation camera. To solve these problems, we developed an installation location selection system based on the previous method plus a selection method that considers the prospect to the observation target. The method was implemented and evaluated in the natural environment. In this paper, we explain the proposed method and report field-experimental results.