Initial Experiments on 3D Modeling of Complex Disaster Environments Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

The use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has the potential to significantly improve the situation awareness of emergency first responders working at urban disaster sites. Having the characteristics of being small, light-weight and quickly deployable, UAVs offer the ability to fly over an urban disaster and provide intelligence to Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) task force efforts before precious operational resources are committed on the ground. In this paper we discuss our experience with using a small UAV to perform the task of creating a 3D model of a rubble pile's surface using commercial off the shelf (COTS) components in the form of an available UAV equipped with a modified video game sensing package.