Near-Real Time Forest Fire Monitoring System From an UAV

Abstract: The purpose of this thesis is to implement a payload system on a drone to help fire towers in near-realtime survey forests for wildfires. The payload system should be able to communicate with a groundstation through a mobile network and the survey should be tagged with relevant metadata. Thisincludes choosing capturing devices, computer and other modules that are needed to fulfill itsfunction. The payload was eventually fitted with an USB camera, a single board computer and amodule for the single board computer that enabled 4G connectivity and GPS coordinates. The internalcommunication between all the components was made with a python script, and a connection linkthrough the protocol WebSocket was created to keep the communication between the flying drone andthe ground station running. The results show that a near-real time monitoring system can beaccomplished onboard the UAV and transmitted to a ground station through the mobile network. Itcan be concluded that the final approach works, but has some flaws that requires adjustments to bemore sustainable.