| Patent holder | Univ IlliModelis |
| Country | United States |
| Patent link | View patent |
| Category | Planning & Inventory › Remote sensing & mapping |
Adaptive cyber-physical system for efficient monitoring of unstructured environmnets
Monitoring of unstructured environments using UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) refers to the use of remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPAS) to conduct systematic surveillance and data collection across complex, irregular, or inaccessible landscapes — such as forests, wetlands, rugged terrain, post-fire zones, and active harvesting coupes — where environmental conditions are highly variable and difficult to characterise using fixed sensor networks or ground-based methods alone. Unlike structured industrial environments, unstructured environments pose significant challenges for UAV operations including variable lighting, wind turbulence, GPS signal obstruction under dense canopy, complex obstacle fields, and rapidly changing conditions, requiring adaptive flight planning, robust real-time collision avoidance, and sensor fusion strategies that integrate data from cameras, LiDAR, multispectral sensors, and IMUs. In forestry applications, UAV monitoring of unstructured environments encompasses a wide range of use cases: post-harvest regeneration assessment, weed and pest incursion detection, wildfire spread monitoring and post-fire damage mapping, slope stability and erosion monitoring in harvested catchments, road and drainage infrastructure inspection, and wildlife habitat surveillance in sensitive areas. Advances in autonomy — including simultaneous localisation and mapping (SLAM), terrain-following flight modes, and AI-powered onboard image analysis — are progressively reducing the need for skilled pilots to manually navigate complex forestry environments, enabling longer endurance survey missions and swarm-based coverage of large areas. In Australia, UAV monitoring of unstructured forest environments is conducted under Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) regulations, and is increasingly embedded in the operational workflows of forestry companies, environmental consultants, and government land management agencies, particularly for post-bushfire recovery monitoring following events such as the 2019–20 Black Summer fires, which affected over 18 million hectares of Australian landscape.
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Company | Univ IlliModelis |
| Country | United States |
| Type | Patent |
| Year | 27/6/23 |
| Status | Active |
| FWPA RD&E | 7.3 |
| Inventors | Chowdhary Girish, Soman Chinmay P, Barber Beau David |
| Patent No. | US 12117831 B2 |