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landing), rotor-wing, with MTOW less than 25 kg. They are The Payload is the load added to the frame. It is upper-
commonly denoted like small drones[7]. bounded by the MTOW and its value is determined by
The basic architecture of a small drone consists of: frame, subtracting the weight of all the fixed elements (such as
brushless motors, electronics speed control (ESC), flight frame, motor, battery, etc.) to the MTOW. Typical payload
control board, Inertial Navigation System (INS), power values range from 0.5 kg for the most commercial drones and
source, gimbal, payload, landing gear [17]. The frame is the 2.5kg for professional ones. In general, landing gear is used
load-bearing structure designed to be strong and lightweight to protect the drone during landing phase and to balance the
and the most used for professional drones is the carbon fiber load of the aircrafts fuselage. In fact, the vertical load due to
frame for its physical strength, specific toughness, light the weight is distributed along the landing gear structure.
weight. Some frame configurations are reported in [16]. There are many applications in which drone-based sensor
The brushless motors provide the mechanical energy networks can improve human abilities of perception and
necessary to the propellers rotation [17]. The ESC controls control. Relevant examples are automation, industrial and
the propellers angular velocity of the drone. It is driven by a commercial building monitoring for safety and security, etc
Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) signal. In fact, by varying In particular, as for railway line security monitoring, though
the duty cycle value, it is possible to increase and to reduce considered a need by the operators, that is rarely performed in
the propeller rotation. In this way, the drone performs yaw, railway systems due to the length of the lines and the
roll, pitch and throttle movements and shifts along the difficulties in providing lineside power supplies and
longitudinal and lateral axis. The flight control board telecommunication facilities in an affordable way
represents the intelligence of a drone since it manages the Presently, conventional methods for railway infrastructure
commands received from the CS transforming them into surveillance employ analogic or IP cameras, wired intrusion
actions towards the sensors or others controller on board. The detection and other structural monitoring sensors (i.e.
INS consists of 3-axial accelerometer, 3-axial gyroscope and piezoelectric accelerometers). While fixed wired sensors
3-axial magnetometer for measuring accelerations, angular provide a very reliable source of information, they are time
rates and magnetic values respectively. Acquiring the consuming to install and quite expensive to operate and
measurements provided by the INS, it is possible to evaluate maintain. Each installed sensor/camera can cost thousands of
the 3-axis Euler angle measurements. These angles then are Euros and that makes extensive surveillance unfeasible when
used for the aircraft orientation control during the flight. there is the need to cover very large geographical areas, as in
Since drone orientation measurements are affected by noise, the case of railways. Therefore, in recent years many research
specific algorithms for a good estimation are used [17]. Most efforts have been devoted to the development of new
drones are powered with Lithium-polymer batteries (Li-Po) technology sensors, including Wi-Fi cameras, WSN smart-
which guarantee better performance in terms of lightweight, sensors (also known as motes or smart-dust) and Optical
safety and flexible form factor. The gimbal is the structure Fiber Bragg Grating (OFBG) [22][21].
which holds the camera on board. It is based on the same In Table 1 we show a comparison between fixed sensor
concept of the gyroscope since it decouples the axis of a networks (both traditional and WSN) and drone-based sensor
camera from the movement of the aircraft. Moreover it is networks.
made up of brushless motors to adjust the position of the
camera in all directions: up/down, left/right,
forward/backward [27].
DRONE-BASED RAILWAY INFRASTRUCTURE MONITORING
TABLE I The aim of drone-based railway surveillance is to perform
COMPARISON BETWEEN SENSOR NETWORKS AND DRONES-BASED SENSORS
an extensive monitoring of (a part of) a railway infrastructure
Fixed Sensor Drone-based Sensor system against common threats (see Figure 1 - Reference
Characteristics
Networks Networks
drone-based railway surveillance architecture). In railway
sensing unit fixed variable environments, drones are suitable for three main applications:
installation capability limited unlimited
sensors number few to many very few
sensor distribution sparse to dense semi-continuous 1. Structural monitoring, especially for critical assets
node maintainability low to average very high
node redundancy low to high very high
like bridges and tunnels, for fault detection (i.e.
diagnostics/prognostics).
sensing capability nearly full limited 2. Environmental security monitoring, that is fire,
sensing compatibility nearly full limited
node accuracy low to high low explosions, earthquakes, floods and landslides
node reliability low to high low to average detection along the track.
node cost low to high high
3. Physical security monitoring, that is detection of
transmitted data raw or processed raw or processed intrusions, objects stolen or moved, graffiti, etc.
transmission accuracy low to high low to high
transmission reliability low to high low to high 4. Safety monitoring, e.g. to early detect failures on
transmission range low to high low to high track elements/devices or obstacles on the track.
transmission BW low to high low to high
network topology fixed or changing fixed or changing
5. Situation assessment and emergency/crisis
management, that is to monitor accident scenarios
and coordinate the intervention of first responders.
As mentioned above, conventional monitoring systems 6. Forensics, to investigate about the causes of
consisting of a large amount of sensors are either high-priced accidents and safely detect the presence of
or made-up of cheap sensors (WSN). On that regards, drone- dangerous substances in case of CBRN (Chemical
based monitoring has the potential of adopting more Biological Radiological Nuclear) terrorist attacks.
reliable/expensive sensors without the need for buying and
installing a large amount of them. Hence, drone-based Drone payload can integrate sensors of different nature to
surveillance can be the perfect trade-off between traditional provide diverse functionalities, depending on energy
sensing and WSN smart-motes in all those applications where consumption and maximum allowed weight (e.g. temperature
suitable sensors are available. The basic principle lies in a sensors, intelligent cameras, etc.). For instance, self-powered
multi-drone architecture that is able to collect data locally on chemical sensors could be mounted on-board to provide quick
a specific point of the infrastructure and send relevant data and safe analyses of incident field earth samples. Another
(measures environmental parameters, events, alarms) to possible application is the graffiti detection on perimeter
remote control centers for online and/or offline analysis. walls or trains stored in depots, as introduced by the railway
Figure 1 shows a possible overall hardware architecture of company Deutsche Bahn by equipping drones with infrared
drone-based surveillance. Fixed distributed smart-sensors are cameras to individuate people during the night responsible of
installed along the railway line both in fixed (e.g. bridges, these acts [9]. Regardless of the specific application and
tunnels, stations, etc.) and mobile (passenger trains, freight payload, both the hardware and the middleware can be reused
cars, etc.) locations [4]. They are integrated locally using to fit new monitoring applications.
local wireless infrastructures (e.g. Wi-Fi, ZigBee, etc.) and
then data is collected by WSN gateway nodes to be
Track assets and depot monitoring
transmitted remotely by means of WAN (Wide Area
Network) infrastructures, like the 2G,3G cellular networks,
A further drones limitation, in addition to weather
satellite links, or Fiber Optics geographic networks along the
conditions and payload weight, is the remote control range
line. With the availability of large bandwidth (in the Gb/s
via Wi-Fi or in general through a radio link provided by a
range) provided for example by fiber optics link, it is possible
hand-held radio transmitter and a receiver module on-board.
to transmit high-resolution videos at very high frame-rates
However, these ones are much easier to overcome in railway
(e.g. 25 FPS) for a superior situational awareness at the
applications.
control rooms. In case of drones, those links could be In fact, it can be assumed that railway systems [2] are
leveraged by fixed drone stations to quickly download large always equipped with wireless MAN (Metropolitan Area
amount of on-board recorded data Network) or WAN (Wide Area Networks), based on Wi-Fi,
GSM-R GPRS or any other commercial infrastructure like
UMTS and LTE. Low bandwidth networks like GPRS are
strictly required to control drones and transmit alarms to the
control center; if high-quality video streams from cameras
need to be shown to the operators in order to verify the alarm
and/or supervise the situation, higher bandwidth is required could be appropriate to detect changes in scenes (e.g.
that can be provided by Wi-Fi or UMTS/LTE. obstacles, stolen objects, damages, etc.) in reasonably fixed,
In order to achieve extensive coverage in railway automatic and periodic patrolling routes, without even
applications, let us refer to the following specification and running motion tracking software [24]. Such an analysis can
implications associated to one of the most widespread be also performed off-line on more powerful computers, after
professional drone, DJI Phantom 4 [19]: the drone on-board recorded video has been downloaded on
drone smart-parking stations, like the Dronebox [1]. Such a
Max Speed 20 m/s = 72 km/h VCA (Video Content Analytics) change detection application
Approx. Max Flight Time = 30 = 0.5h is not much different from the one already developed for
Consequently, Max Distance = 36 km indoor applications like Empty Vehicle Detection [3].
On-board laser measurement units featuring precision of less
than 1cm could also be investigated to monitor structural
integrity of critical assets like catenary, electrical substations,
track lines, tunnels, rail bridges and viaducts.