Weather Sensing in an Urban Environment with the Use of a UAV and WebRTC-Based Platform: A Pilot Study

Abstract

Thanks to IoT, Internet access, and low-cost sensors, it has become possible to increase the number of weather measuring points; hence, the density of the deployment of sources that provide weather data for the needs of large recipients, for example, weather web services or smart city management systems, has also increased. This paper presents a flying weather station that carries out measurements of two weather factors that are typically included in weather stations (ambient temperature and relative humidity), an often included weather factor (atmospheric pressure), and a rarely included one (ultraviolet index). In our solution, the measurements are supplemented with a visual observation of present weather phenomena. The flying weather station is built on a UAV and WebRTC-based universal platform proposed in our previous paper. The complete, fully operational flying weather station was evaluated in field studies. Experiments were conducted during a 6-month period on days having noticeably different weather conditions. Results show that weather data coming from the flying weather station were equal (with a good approximation) to weather data obtained from the reference weather station. When compared to the weather stations described in the literature (both stationary weather stations and mobile ones), the proposed solution achieved better accuracy than the other weather stations based on low-cost sensors.

Deep Reinforcement Learning Tf-Agent-Based Object Tracking With Virtual Autonomous Drone in a Game Engine

“…Furthermore, implementing this model helps to integrate with a complete processing algorithm to achieve efficient samples from input images and minimize hyperparameter tuning indicators. It achieves the same performance improvements while avoiding complexity by optimizing the basics of the Clipped Surrogate Objective (7).…”

“…In most cases, it can be beneficial for increasing the productivity of large plantations with congenerous growers to determine drainage patterns and wetdry spots of field elevation that allow more efficient watering techniques. Moreover, there are several fields in which drones are being applied, such as surveillance and controlling large unreachable areas [3], drones for medical purposes such as Automated Emergency Drones (AED) [4], and autonomous drones for search and rescue operations [5], in UAV-based road traffic monitoring applications [6], drones for weather sensing in an urban environment application [7], emergency drone system applications for firefighter processes [8], and drones for entertainment: photography and cinematography [9]. Many recent innovations and technologies related to UAV frameworks include surveillance and target tracking units for several reasons, including security maintenance, control, military assistance, and traffic monitoring, besides manufacturing optimization and control.…”

Intelligent IoT-based Control System of the UAV for Meteorological Measurements

“…Another critical research focus is on the development of sophisticated data assimilation and modeling techniques [13,[28][29][30]. Integrating data collected from UAVs into meteorological models is essential for enhancing the accuracy of weather forecasts and climate models.…”

The Prototype Monitoring System for Pollution Sensing and Online Visualization with the Use of a UAV and a WebRTC-Based Platform

“…The unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and Web Real-Time Communications (WebRTC)based platform for monitoring urban and industrial areas, reported in our previous paper [29], combines IoT-based measurements with video from 4K camera and WebRTC [30][31][32], which was fully standardized this year [31,33] using the technology of native real-time transmission between Web browsers. One of the proposed new use cases of the WebRTC is the IoT [34] and, more precisely, the Web of Things (WoT), i.e., the integration of smart things with the Web [35].…”

“…The experience gained during the design and implementation of the early prototype of the WebRTC-based flying monitoring system [36] was used during the construction of the UAV and WebRTC-based framework [37]. This framework was the basis of the mobile weather monitoring system [29]. This paper is focused on another purpose for the framework, which is the Kestrel, i.e., the system intended for widely understood environmental measurements carried out by air.…”