Deployment of Aerial Robots after a major fire of an industrial hall with hazardous substances, a report

TL;DR

This report details the deployment of UAVs equipped with cameras for reconnaissance inside a hazardous industrial hall after a fire, creating 3D models and interactive panoramas to aid emergency response.

Contribution

Introduces a UAV-based method for interior reconnaissance of hazardous sites, including 3D modeling and interactive panorama visualization to support emergency operations.

Findings

UAVs successfully captured interior images of the damaged hall.

Visual SLAM and image processing improved data quality for modeling.

Interactive panorama viewer enhanced situational awareness for emergency services.

Abstract

This technical report is about the mission and the experience gained during the reconnaissance of an industrial hall with hazardous substances after a major fire in Berlin. During this operation, only UAVs and cameras were used to obtain information about the site and the building. First, a geo-referenced 3D model of the building was created in order to plan the entry into the hall. Subsequently, the UAVs were used to fly in the heavily damaged interior and take pictures from inside of the hall. A 360{\deg} camera mounted under the UAV was used to collect images of the surrounding area especially from sections that were difficult to fly into. Since the collected data set contained similar images as well as blurred images, it was cleaned from non-optimal images using visual SLAM, bundle adjustment and blur detection so that a 3D model and overviews could be calculated. It was shown that the emergency services were not able to extract the necessary information from the 3D model. Therefore, an interactive panorama viewer with links to other 360{\deg} images was implemented where the links to the other images depends on the semi dense point cloud and located camera positions of the visual SLAM algorithm so that the emergency forces could view the surroundings.