Evaluating the Correlation between Thermal Signatures of UAV Video Stream versus Photomosaic for Urban Rooftop Solar Panels

Remote Sensing

Jung-Sup Um¹  Stephan Schlüter²  Young-Seok Hwang³  Jung-Joo Lee⁴ 

[1] Department of Geography, Kyungpook National University, Daegu 41566, Korea;Department of Mathematics, Natural and Economic Sciences, Ulm University of Applied Sciences, 89075 Ulm, Germany;Kyungpook Institute of Oceanography, Kyungpook National University, Daegu 41566, Korea;Research Institute of Spatial Information, Kyungpook National University, Daegu 41566, Korea;

关键词: unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV);    video;    urban rooftop solar panel;    photomosaic;    co-relationship;    thermal signature;   

DOI  :  10.3390/rs13234770

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

The unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) autopilot flight to survey urban rooftop solar panels needs a certain flight altitude at a level that can avoid obstacles such as high-rise buildings, street trees, telegraph poles, etc. For this reason, the autopilot-based thermal imaging has severe data redundancy—namely, that non-solar panel area occupies more than 99% of ground target, causing a serious lack of the thermal markers on solar panels. This study aims to explore the correlations between the thermal signatures of urban rooftop solar panels obtained from a UAV video stream and autopilot-based photomosaic. The thermal signatures of video imaging are strongly correlated (0.89–0.99) to those of autopilot-based photomosaics. Furthermore, the differences in the thermal signatures of solar panels between the video and photomosaic are aligned in the range of noise equivalent differential temperature with a 95% confidence level. The results of this study could serve as a valuable reference for employing video stream-based thermal imaging to urban rooftop solar panels.

【 授权许可】

Unknown