At long last, here are all the materials from my Master’s Thesis:
Abstract
There can be little doubt that Hurricane Katrina will always be remembered for the damage and devastation it caused. But it also provided the ï¬rst opportunity for MAVs to be used and evaluated during Search and Rescue (SAR) as well as recovery operations. Researchers from The Center for Robot-Assisted Search And Rescue (CRASAR) made two separate deployments to areas affected by Hurricane Katrina: one during initial SAR operations and a second deployment during recovery operations 90 days later. Using data and observations from both of these deployments, this work draws four key ï¬ndings about semi-autonomous Miniature UAV (MAV) operations in urban environments. These ï¬ndings are intended to guide future MAV research as well as serve as a roadmap for the evolution from semi-autonomous to fully autonomous MAV capabilities. These ï¬ndings are as follows: the minimum useful standoff distance from inspected structures is 2-5 m, omni-directional sensor capabilities are needed for obstacle avoidance, GPS waypoint navigation is unnecessary, and that these operations currently require three operators for one MAV.
Link to the PDF: Master’s Thesis
And linked offsite to save space (so, email me if these links ever break):
The sources (LaTeX, BibTeX, style class, and images to build the pdf): Sources.zip
The Keynote presentation: Master’s Defense
PDF export of presentation + videos: Master’s Defense PDF
(there is a list of which video goes to what slide in the zip)
And finally, as with the thesis itself, all of this is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license: CC 3.0 By-NC