PHOTOGRAMMETRIC ENGINEERING & REMOTE SENSING
March 2019
157
SECTOR
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By Mark Reichardt, and Scott Simmons
Remote Sensing, Drones, Unstuffed Systems (UxS), Sensors, and Interoperability at Open
Geospatial Consortium (OGC)
Introduction
UxS, or unstaffed systems are fast becoming the norm for
accomplishing time-critical observations, situational aware-
ness, and material delivery. The myriad of airborne, ground-
based, and water-borne UxS have a wide range of operation-
al, data processing, and data management tasks tailored to
support the end user – whether they are hobbyists or experts.
The ability to rapidly deploy and re-use key UxS workflows is
a challenge, given the variety of platforms, observing sensors,
and end-user requirements. To address this challenge, gov-
ernment and industry bodies are working to identify common
interoperability arrangements that could streamline UxS de-
ployment and maximize choice in the marketplace. This ar-
ticle discusses today’s open standards environment as appli-
cable to UxS interoperability. We will emphasize the context
of location, which permeates all aspects of UxS operations:
from mission planning, to capturing and processing of obser-
vations, to delivering a package to a doorstep.
Current Drone Architecture Environment
In the context of Unstaffed Aircraft Systems (UAS) or drones,
many people refer to the current environment as the “Wild
West.” Platform and sensor technologies are rapidly evolving,
and new use-cases are being realized on a daily basis. The
proliferation of relatively low-cost professional and consumer
/ hobbyist aircraft into the services marketplace has been par-
ticularly transformative.
The ‘consumerization’ of the technology means that UAS no
longer require extensive training to deploy and operate, large-
ly due to: (1) vast improvements in consumer-grade hardware
miniaturization and (2) improved software to assist in-flight
operation.
Opportunity exists now to align the UAS community on a
common framework of open voluntary consensus standards to
maintain a diverse marketplace, reduce vendor lock-in, and
facilitate the rapid mobilization of UAS assets even as mis-
sion requirements and technologies change. The American
National Standards Institute Unmanned Aircraft Systems
Collaborative
1
with involvement of over 180 government,
industry organizations, associations and standards organi-
zations, including OGC, is working to define an inventory of
existing UAS voluntary consensus open standards, and to es-
tablish a roadmap of areas where standardization challenges
still exist. This is an excellent start.
Of particular importance is the ability to use standards as
part of architectures or best practices that can meet a set of
common mission requirements. One important area involves
using UAS-based remote sensing to meet a range of user
needs, including urban planning, infrastructure inspection
(i.e., pipeline, electric transmission, bridges, undersea ca-
bles), search and rescue, precision agriculture, and land ad-
ministration, to name but a few.
Addressing Interoperability
A proven and widely implemented geospatial interoperability
framework already exists to support general UAS operations
(e.g., geofencing, flight planning) as well as imaging, point
cloud, and other remote sensing observations from UAS’ on-
board sensors (Figure 1), and to process this information to
support applications and decision making. The key is the
ability of an open standards-based architecture to rapidly
enable: the introduction of a range of observation platforms;
the connection to, and integration of, multiple sensors; the
management and processing of sensor observations; and, ul-
timately, the application of the sensor observations in a situ-
ational awareness or decision context.
Standards-based Architecture
The existing architecture for drone operations builds upon
legacy concepts from general aviation and large UAS capa-
bilities. Architectural elements can be divided into three gen-
eral aspects of UAS use: (1) pre-flight mission planning and
Photogrammetric Engineering & Remote Sensing
Vol. 85, No. 3, March 2019, pp. 157–159.
0099-1112/18/157–159
© 2019 American Society for Photogrammetry
and Remote Sensing
doi: 10.14358/PERS.85.3.157
