DroneAGE: un ambiente virtuale a supporto delle missioni di UAS per il telerilevamento di terreni agricoli e altre applicazioni

The interest in using unmanned aircraft systems (UAS/RPAS/SAPR/APR commonly known as "drones") as a platform to support data acquisition is quickly growing among different communities, areas and sectors. UAS have proven to be very useful in territory monitoring, due to the high spatial and temporal resolution of the measurements, the great operational flexibility and the possibility to be used in scenarios that are challenging for more established devices (satellites, aircrafts, ground vehicles, etc.). The paper presents DroneAGE software supporting UAS remote sensing missions, in early stages of development. It is based on a virtual environment displaying both the operational scenario and the relevant information through contextualized graphics. While it is common for UAS to include software for mission planning and control, the presented tool will integrate with them providing additional features and an intuitive and natural interface, while being independent from external services. The goal is to improve the situation-awareness of involved human beings, showing information in a quickly understandable and non-distracting way. The following goals are among the expected benefits of such approach: an improvement of the quality of acquired data and of acquisition methodologies, and positive outcomes in specific application areas on both economic and security perspectives. The adoption of open-source components enhances the opportunity to extend in the future the tool for utilization in other contexts; it shows particular interest the interactive presentation of acquired data for evaluation, interpretation or (re)planning purposes. The solution is also intended to be flexible in terms of supported input/output devices. The work is part of Space4Agri project supported by the bilateral agreement between Regione Lombardia and National Research Council of Italy.