Investigating the Role and Position of UAVs and Geospatial Information Systems in Command and Control from the perspective of Geomatics

Abstract

Unmanned aerial platforms as one of the sources of information in these command and control systems, in addition to being able to provide accurate 3D products, have numerous benefits including reduced time, cost, and specialized equipment and less need for specialized personnel than other methods. The data obtained from these platforms are analyzed after initial processing and logged into GIS and provide the commanders with the required information at the required levels. In this paper, we evaluate the new capabilities of unmanned aerial platforms, analyze and integrate the information of these sensors installed on these devices and use this data in spatial information systems for military and defense applications. For this purpose, surveys were carried out on images taken by the eBee Plus flying platform using a CanonIXUS127HS sub-urban sensor using Pix4dmapper software. Using the GNSS antenna and the IMU, External interior orientation elements of the images were measured. also, to verify the geometric accuracy of the images, a total of 19 ground control points in the region were used as checkpoints and the residual error values of each were calculated. The results show the mean error of horizontal components, respectively, is 0.008 and -0.01 m and in the height component, is 0.009 m, which indicates the high accuracy of 3D products produced using these platforms without using ground control points. Finally, some of the novel applications of GIS in command and control systems have been evaluated.

Keywords

• command and control system (c4i)
• geospatial information systems (gis)
• unmanned aerial vehicle
• integrated information