Urban monitoring of smart communities using UAS

Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) have become prevalent for a wide spectrum of civilian applications. Support tools and technologies for UAS-based monitoring of smart cities and communities are under development, where Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are the main means of implementation. UAVs provide the eye-in-the-sky alternative to ground-based monitoring, contributing to safety, early anomaly detection and possibly prediction, and improving everyday quality of life with little disruption of, and interference with, humans. This paper presents a simulated real-world environment and accurate model of the city of Turin (Italy) and implements it in the Gazebo software physics simulator, with the aim of monitoring the city. The environment allows for piloting and navigating UAVs with on-board cameras and other onboard sensors through a Ground Control Station (GCS), or through manual direct piloting. Simulated scenarios illustrate monitoring over the perimeter of the urban area, autonomous flight, partially autonomous flight and manual piloting of the UAV. It is expected that obtained results will pave the way to developing complex simulated world environments where candidate scenarios will be developed and executed before real-world testing.