Image and Vision Computing 32 (2014) 568–578

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Image and Vision Computing

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/imavis

Timely autonomous identification of UAV safe landing zones☆

Timothy Patterson a,⁎, Sally McClean a, Philip Morrow a, Gerard Parr a, Chunbo Luo b
a
School of Computing and Information Engineering, University of Ulster, Cromore Road, Coleraine, BT52 1SA Northern Ireland, United Kingdom
b
School of Computing, University of the West of Scotland, Paisley, Scotland PA1 2BE, United Kingdom

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: For many applications such as environmental monitoring in the aftermath of a natural disaster and mountain
Received 14 September 2012 search-and-rescue, swarms of autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have the potential to provide a
Received in revised form 14 February 2014 highly versatile and often relatively inexpensive sensing platform. Their ability to operate as an ‘eye-in-the-
Accepted 26 June 2014
sky’, processing and relaying real-time colour imagery and other sensor readings facilitate the removal of humans
Available online 3 July 2014
from situations which may be considered dull, dangerous or dirty. However, as with manned aircraft they are
Keywords:
likely to encounter errors, the most serious of which may require the UAV to land as quickly and safely as possi-
UAV safe landing zone detection ble. Within this paper we therefore present novel work on autonomously identifying Safe Landing Zones (SLZs)
Terrain classification which can be utilised upon occurrence of a safety critical event. Safe Landing Zones are detected and subsequent-
Fuzzy logic ly assigned a safety score either solely using multichannel aerial imagery or, whenever practicable by fusing
UAV safety knowledge in the form of Ordnance Survey (OS) map data with such imagery. Given the real-time nature of
the problem we subsequently model two SLZ detection options one of which utilises knowledge enabling the
UAV to choose an optimal, viable solution. Results are presented based on colour aerial imagery captured during
manned flight demonstrating practical potential in the methods discussed.
© 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction which has a primary focus of utilising swarms of communicating, auton-

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have the potential to revolution-
ise current working practices for many military and civilian applications
such as assisting in search-and-rescue missions [1] and environmental
monitoring [2]. The widespread availability of multiple Commercial
Off-The-Shelf (COTS) air frame designs when coupled together with re-
cent advances in sensing technologies such as lightweight, high resolu-
tion colour cameras ensures that in comparison to manned aircraft
UAVs offer a versatile and often inexpensive solution to many such ap-
plications. A key advantage provided by UAVs is the removal of humans
from situations which may be classified as dull, dangerous or dirty, for
example power line inspection, aerial surveillance and monitoring of at-
mospheric pollution.
There are two main types of UAV control, piloted and autonomous.
Piloted UAVs are controlled in real-time by a human operator often lo-
cated many miles from the deployment area. On the other hand, auton-
omous UAVs generate low-level flight control commands in response to
high-level goals, for example GPS waypoints. One such project con-
cerned with the creation and evaluation of autonomous UAVs is the
Sensing Unmanned Autonomous Aerial Vehicles (SUAAVE) project [3]
☆ This paper has been recommended for acceptance by Konrad Schindler, PhD.
⁎ Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: t.patterson@ulster.ac.uk (T. Patterson), si.mcclean@ulster.ac.uk
(S. McClean), pj.morrow@ulster.ac.uk (P. Morrow), gp.parr@ulster.ac.uk (G. Parr),
chunbo.luo@uws.ac.uk (C. Luo).
omous UAVs for a mountain search-and-rescue type scenario. Currently,
there are three types of adapted, Ascending Technologies rotor based
UAV platforms used within the SUAAVE project. Each platform has a
flight speed of around 10 m/s with approximately 20 min battery life.
Colour cameras of varying dimensions, power requirements and capa-
bilities are fitted to the UAVs. Additionally, all platforms contain an
IEEE 802.11 wireless networking card, a GPS receiver, an Inertial Navi-
gation System (INS) and an ATOM processing board enabling automat-
ed, in-flight processing and analysis of captured colour aerial imagery
and other sensory inputs.
1.1. Aims and motivation
As with manned aircraft the dependability and integrity of a UAV
platform can be influenced by the occurrence of various endogenous
and exogenous events, for example a change in wind strength may im-
pact upon the UAV's remaining battery life. Due to the potential ethical
and legal implications of an in-flight UAV failure the UK Civil Aviation
Authority's UAV regulations are currently similar to those specified for
model aircraft [4]. As such one regulation is that UAVs must remain
within 500 m of the human operator at all times thereby limiting the
usefulness of UAVs for many real-world applications. Before these oper-
ational constraints can be relaxed there are a number of safety related
technical challenges which must be addressed including sense-and-
avoid capabilities and provision of a safe landing system.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.imavis.2014.06.006
0262-8856/© 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
 T. Patterson et al. / Image and Vision Computing 32 (2014) 568–578 569

For many safety critical situations the safest course of action may be
to instruct the UAV to land as quickly and safely as possible. In particular
there are three types of error which may impact upon the safe operation
of a UAV thus necessitating an emergency landing.
1. Loss of communication link. A key system requirement of the
SUAAVE project is that each swarm member must maintain a direct
or multi-hop communication link with the base station. This commu-
nication link is via the IEEE 802.11 wireless networking protocol and
enables each UAV to receive commands such as return home or land
immediately from a human-in-the-loop. The loss of this link would
potentially result in the UAV being uncontrollable and is therefore
deemed a safety critical event.
2. Hardware/software errors. The most serious of this class of error, for
example an actuator failure, may require the UAV to descend imme-
diately in a controlled fashion and land on the ground directly below.
Other less serious errors, for example a software module crashing,
may require the UAV to land and perform a soft reset.
3. GPS failure. During normal flight conditions the UAVs used within
the SUAAVE project navigate using coordinates obtained from a
GPS receiver. However, the signal strength and reliability of GPS
can be influenced by terrain profile [5]. Whilst a method of position
estimation using Ordnance Survey (OS) map data and aerial imagery
has been developed [6], in the event of prolonged loss of GPS signal
the UAV would be commanded to land.
Intuitively it cannot be assumed that the ground directly beneath the
UAV is suitable for landing in, as it may contain humans, animals or haz-
ards. Furthermore, due to the limited flight time of the UAVs it cannot be
assumed that previously determined landing sites are attainable. It is
therefore desirable to have an autonomous method of Safe Landing
Zone (SLZ) detection which can be executed on colour aerial imagery
obtained from onboard, passive colour cameras. Due to the flight
speed of the UAVs, algorithms using such imagery, for example SLZ de-
tection must execute in real-time as failure to do so will result in areas
on the UAV's flight path remaining unprocessed.
In Fig. 1 the primary phases of UAV operation are illustrated in con-
junction with an overview of SLZ detection. Upon bootstrap success the
UAV becomes airbourne and recursively cycles through the self diag-
nostics and operation modes. During operation mode the SLZ detection

Fig. 1. Primary modes of UAV operation demonstrating when SLZ detection is considered as a soft or hard real-time system. Potential SLZs are identified within an input aerial image using a
combination of edge detection and dilation. These potential SLZs are then assigned a safety score and depending on the mode of operation either used immediately as a SLZ or stored for
future use.
570 T. Patterson et al. / Image and Vision Computing 32 (2014) 568–578
algorithm is continuously executed on sensed aerial imagery. Detected
SLZs with a high safety score are stored in a database thereby providing
an invaluable measure of robustness should a UAV encounter an error in
a location where no SLZs exist. We consider this mode of operation to be
a soft real-time system whereby it is not regarded as a safety critical
event if processing a colour image requires slightly longer than a
predetermined threshold. Should diagnostics fail, the UAV will attempt
to recover by, for example navigating back within communication range
with other swarm members. In the event where this recovery fails the
UAV is issued with an abort command and must determine if a suitable
SLZ exists from its current location. We consider abort mode to be a hard
real-time system whereby failure to process a colour aerial image with-
in the required time frame may have catastrophic consequences.
Within this paper we present an extension of our previous work on
autonomous SLZ detection discussed in [7] and [8] resulting in a SLZ de-
tection algorithm which has the capability of exploiting knowledge in
the form of OS data in addition to utilising the multichannel nature of
colour aerial imagery. There are two primary contributions. Firstly, we
incorporate OS data into the potential SLZ detection phase thus provid-
ing a measure of robustness against image noise. Furthermore, we use
OS data to assist with the assignment of SLZ safety scores, fusing the
OS data and multichannel aerial imagery to perform terrain classifica-
tion and also to determine the Euclidean distance between a SLZ and
man-made objects. Secondly, given the scenario of an abort command,
the available time frame under which the hard real-time system must
execute is variable and strongly influenced by the UAV's remaining
battery life. Whilst incorporating knowledge into the SLZ detection al-
gorithm provides a more reliable result there is a time overhead in-
curred. We therefore model the execution time of two SLZ detection
options one of which incorporates knowledge enabling the UAV to
choose an optimal, viable method.
The remainder of this paper is structured as follows; in Section 2 a
brief overview of work related to SLZ detection is given. In Section 3
we discuss autonomously identifying potential SLZs. These potential
SLZs are then assigned a safety score as presented in Section 4. In
Section 5 we model the execution times of two SLZ detection options
thus enabling the UAV to choose an optimal, viable, SLZ detection meth-
od. An evaluation is presented in Section 6. Finally, conclusions and pro-
posed further work are outlined in Section 7.
2. Related work
There are two main types of SLZ detection algorithms within the
literature namely, semi-autonomous and fully autonomous. Semi-
autonomous approaches rely on a human operator delineating a general
suitable landing area after which the UAV detects a specific landing site.
Alternatively fully autonomous approaches rely solely on SLZ detection
algorithms on-board a UAV. For completeness a brief overview of the
relevant literature is provided in the following subsections.
2.1. Semi-autonomous SLZ detection
Many of the early semi-autonomous approaches to UAV landing
such as the work by Sharp and Shakernia [9] and Saripalli et al. [10] fo-
cused on specially constructed landing pads of known size, shape and
location. The design of many of these landing pads enabled the UAV to
utilise image processing techniques in order to reliably estimate altitude
and pose thus providing low level flight control with invaluable posi-
tional information. For example, Merz et al. [11] propose a landing pad
consisting of 5 circle triplets. The pose of the UAV is determined from
the projection of three circles positioned on the corner points of an equi-
lateral triangle. This is fused with inertial measurement data using a
Kalman filter to provide a more accurate estimation of UAV pose and al-
titude. A further example landing site design is presented by Lange et al.
[12] where the pattern consists of concentric circles with increasing di-
ameters. Each circle has a unique ratio of inner-to-outer radius which
can be used in conjunction with camera properties to estimate the
UAV's height above ground level (AGL). However, extending an ap-
proach which utilised landing pads for use in a safety critical situation
would necessitate a significant amount of human effort as such pads
would be required in multiple geographic locations.
More recent advances have focused on reconstructing the terrain
profile of an area chosen by a human operator. Such approaches are
based on the underlying assumption that planar regions are suitable
landing areas. This assumption is reasonable given an operator ability
to use human intuition in collating contextual information in order to
choose a potentially suitable landing area.
The use of active sensing devices, for example laser scanners pro-
vides a relatively robust and accurate method of determining terrain
profile [13,14] however, due to their high weight and power require-
ments such sensors are generally impracticable for small rotor-based
platforms. In the semi-autonomous SLZ detection algorithms proposed
by Templeton et al. [15] and Cesetti et al. [16] passive sensors, for exam-
ple colour cameras are used in conjunction with image processing tech-
niques such as computation of optical flow to detect planar regions.
In the work by Templeton et al. [15] the terrain is reconstructed
using a single camera. However, in order to achieve this multiple passes
of the same area are required. In the scenario of an emergency forced
landing this may not be achievable due to limited battery life. A further
disadvantage is the requirement of an accurate estimation of camera
movement. For a UAV with constantly changing velocity this may be
difficult.
In the semi-autonomous approach by Cesetti et al. [16] a user
chooses a safe landing area via a series of navigation waypoints either
from an aerial image or from the live UAV camera feed. A modification
of the Scale Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT) [17] is used to extract
and match natural features in the navigation waypoints to the UAV im-
ages. A hierarchical control structure is used to translate high level com-
mands, for example navigation waypoints, to low level controls, for
example rotor speed.
The SIFT algorithm was chosen in [16] due to the difficulties in ro-
bustly identifying reliable features in an outdoor environment from a
moving platform. SIFT image descriptors are invariant to scale, transla-
tion, rotation and, to some extent, illumination conditions and can
therefore overcome these difficulties with relative success. However
one of the main disadvantages of this algorithm is that the SIFT feature
description of an image can be computationally expensive to compute.
Cesetti et al. overcome this by dividing an input image into sub-
images upon which SIFT is executed only if the sub-image under consid-
eration has a high contrast threshold value which is based upon the sum
and mean of the sub-image's greyscale intensity. This results in SIFT
image descriptors being computed at a rate of 5 frames per second on
320 × 240 pixel images.
The computed SIFT features are utilised for two possible safe landing
site identification scenarios. In the first scenario, the UAV is maintaining
a steady altitude and with a translational motion is tasked with identi-
fying a landing site. The optical flow between two successive images is
estimated using the SIFT features and used to estimate depth structure
information. An assumption is made that areas with low variance be-
tween optical flow vectors indicate flat areas and are therefore deemed
to be a safe landing site. A threshold for determining the boundaries be-
tween safe and unsafe areas is calculated during a supervised training
phase. The second scenario is where the UAV is descending vertically.
In this scenario, a graph of distances is calculated between the features
of two successive images. A hypothesis is proposed that linear zooming
over a flat surface will result in constant variance in graph distances be-
tween two images. Areas with a low variance between successive im-
ages are considered to be safe as they are assumed to be flat.
Both heuristics, i.e. that areas with a low variance between optical
flow vectors and that low variance between successive image features
for linear zooming indicate flat areas are validated to some extent
using both simulations and real data. For the first scenario, an example
 T. Patterson et al. / Image and Vision Computing 32 (2014) 568–578
is provided using real data in which the variance of the optical flow vec-
tor for an unsafe landing site is 302.06 as opposed to a safe landing site
which is 2.78. Cesetti et al. [18] further the potential autonomy of their
original work by incorporating terrain classification into the SLZ detec-
tion algorithm however human interaction is still required.
Fundamentally there are two primary reasons why a semi-
autonomous approach does not provide a robust solution to SLZ detec-
tion for our application of multiple autonomous UAVs conducting a
mountain search-and-rescue mission. Firstly, there is a requirement of
an available communication link between the UAV and a human opera-
tor, the failure of which may have been the very source of the error.
Secondly, the human operator is responsible for a number of tasks in-
cluding validating images which have been flagged as potentially con-
taining a missing person. Placing an additional burden of identifying
suitable, attainable SLZs may result in the neglecting of other tasks pos-
sibly negatively impacting upon the overall success of the mission.
2.2. Autonomous SLZ detection
The work contained within [19–21] presents an approach to auton-
omous SLZ detection using colour aerial imagery for a fixed wing UAV.
The system architecture is divided into two main stages. Firstly, poten-
tial landing sites are identified using edge detection, dilation and the
identification of homogeneous areas of sufficient size. Secondly, the
suitability of potential landing sites is determined based on the terrain
classification and slope.
The terrain of potential landing sites is classified using a back prop-
agation neural network. By using a multi-layered classification ap-
proach, selecting appropriate input features and implementing an
automated subclass generation algorithm an overall terrain type classi-
fication accuracy of 91.95% was achieved. An estimation of terrain slope
was derived from digital elevation maps (DEM). The DEM used in the
work by Fitzgerald et al. was a grid based model of approximately 90
m intervals, i.e. one square in the grid represented an area of 90 m2.
The DEM data is then projected onto the image plane and each pixel
assigned a linguistic slope measure based on the maximum DEM
value between 4 grid points. However, it should be noted that the
work by Fitzgerald et al. is primarily for a large fixed wing UAV which
generally operates at much higher altitudes than the quadrotor UAV
used within SUAAVE. In the case of a UAV determining slope at a
lower altitude, a DEM of this resolution is not sufficient.
Within [19–21] results are presented indicating a 92% potential
landing site detection accuracy and a 93% terrain classification accuracy.
However, when considered from the prospective of SLZ detection for a
small quadrotor UAV there are two main limitations with the approach
described. Firstly, the identification of potentially suitable SLZs is solely
based upon edge detection on a greyscale representation of the input
image which may render the method susceptible to noise such as
shadows. Secondly, the textural features utilised are not invariant to
scale and rotation which may reduce terrain classification accuracy for
imagery captured at multiple scales and rotations caused by frequent
UAV movements such as altitude and yaw adjustments. A further limi-
tation is that, aside from Digital Elevation Models (DEM), potentially
useful external knowledge such as OS map data is not exploited. Within
this paper, we therefore seek to address these limitations.
3. Potential SLZ detection
Following our previous work and that of Fitzgerald et al. [19,20],
the SLZ detection algorithm is divided into two main components
(Fig. 1). Firstly, potential SLZs are detected within an input colour ae-
rial image. Secondly, these potential SLZs are assigned a numeric
safety score which either confirms or discounts their suitability
(Section 4).
571
3.1. Identification of region and object boundaries
The focus of region and object boundary identification is to detect
areas in an input aerial image which are relatively homogeneous and
free from obstacles, for example animals. Two sources of data are
utilised for this stage namely aerial imagery and OS data.
3.1.1. Edge detection
Whilst OS data specifies region boundaries, due to its static nature it
cannot ensure that such boundaries accurately reflect the real world
area. Such examples include locations where houses, roads or paths
are constructed after the survey date. It is therefore desirable to comple-
ment static OS data with real-time aerial imagery. Consequently, the
process of edge detection is of fundamental importance to the overall
success or failure of the SLZ detection algorithm. Edge detection iden-
tifies points within an image exhibiting a steep change, in typically, in-
tensity values. This property renders it particularly useful for the
problem of locating suitable SLZs as generally speaking such areas, for
example grass regions have relatively constant intensity values and
therefore, at higher altitudes do not contain edges. Furthermore there
are types of manmade objects such as power pylons or wind turbines
which pose a risk to safe UAV landing however may not be represented
in OS data. Such objects typically exhibit sudden changes in greyscale
intensity deviation and are therefore identified by edge detection, and
the neighbouring area subsequently discounted as a potential SLZ.
At this stage in development the Canny edge detector [22] is used.
This method conducts a smoothing operation using a Gaussian filter as
a prerequisite to edge detection thereby reducing its susceptibility to
noise. The width of the Gaussian filter, w, can be defined thus providing
a useful advantage as it is likely that at very low altitudes safe areas such
as grass regions may contain a number of edges which do not represent
significant region boundaries. It is therefore desirable that in a real
world implementation the width of the Gaussian filter would be related
to altitude. Further user defined parameters are a high, tH, and low, tL
threshold.
Due to the fundamental role of edge detection within the SLZ identi-
fication algorithm it is desirable that detected edges correspond, as accu-
rately as possible to region boundaries. Whilst it is possible to set low
values for thresholds tH and tL this results in many edges which would
be considered spurious. With this in mind an offline training phase is
conducted during which a human operator chooses edge detection pa-
rameters which yield intuitive results for a series of images. For the
work presented in this paper these parameters are fixed to tH = 16.75,
tL = 8.5 and w = 3 however in the future will be related to UAV altitude.
3.1.2. OS data
For the majority of locations within the UK, invaluable knowledge
regarding the landscape may be derived from OS data. This data spec-
ifies regions as a series of line, point or polygonal features in easting/
northing coordinates to an accuracy of ±0.4 m [23]. Whilst such data
is inherently historic and its incorporation increases the overall execu-
tion time of the algorithm, it is nevertheless an invaluable resource
which can be utilised to complement captured aerial imagery in
assisting with the detection of potential SLZs. Of particular interest to
this stage of the algorithm is the relatively reliable specification of re-
gion boundaries such as roads, buildings and vegetation extents.
In order to ensure seamless compatibility with the image based
components of SLZ detection, vector format OS data for an area enclosed
by an image's geographic bounding box is converted into raster format.
Raster format data represents a real world area as a matrix with each
cell containing a value. For this component of the algorithm a matrix
of dimensions equal to those of the input colour aerial image is created
with each cell containing either 1, i.e. indicating if a region boundary is
present, or conversely 0.
For the purposes of identifying potential SLZs we consider relevant
region boundaries specified in OS data analogous to edges detected
572 T. Patterson et al. / Image and Vision Computing 32 (2014) 568–578
Fig. 2. (A) is an input aerial image on which edge detection is executed resulting in the edges highlighted in white displayed in (B). In (C), OS data is combined with the output of the edge
detection phase. After dilating the edges in (C), regions which do not contain edges are considered as potential SLZs (D).
within an image. This enables the lightweight fusion of such boundaries
with the results of edge detection. An example which demonstrates the
potential usefulness of utilising OS data in this way is displayed in Fig. 2.
In Fig. 2B the results of executing edge detection on a greyscale version
of an input colour aerial image are overlaid in white. However it can be
seen that whilst many region boundaries are successfully detected, por-
tions of a hedge, road and a path are unnoticed. Such boundaries are
generally specified in OS data (Fig. 2C). Therefore the results of edge de-
tection are combined with OS data using logical OR ensuring that all
specified and detected edges are included in the output. Whilst logical
OR currently yields an acceptable output it may be desirable in the fu-
ture to consider combining the edges from OS data and the results of
edge detection using, for example weighted linear combination [24] or
the generative model described in [25]. This would subsequently enable
the reliability of both sources at detecting certain types of edges to be
weighted in a principled fashion.
3.2. Dilation
The morphological process of dilation increases the width of the de-
tected edges discussed in the previous subsection. The dilation of a bina-
ry image containing edges, E, with a structuring element, S, is denoted
by E⊕S and defined as:
n h
 i o
E⊕S ¼ zj ^S ∩E ⊆E ;
z
where E and S have coordinates in 2-D integer space, Z2. This equation is
based on reflecting S about its origin to form ^S and translating the reflec-
tion by z.
For the objective of identifying potentially suitable SLZs, dilation has
two main purposes. Firstly, from a safety prospective, assuming detect-
ed edges correspond to region or object boundaries the process of dila-
tion enables a safety buffer to be placed around such boundaries. This
safety buffer allows for a margin of error when performing the actual
landing. Furthermore, the process of dilation closes small gaps in region
boundaries helping to ensure consistency between detected and real
world boundaries.
Secondly, an important component of potential SLZ detection is the
identification of areas of sufficient size to contain the UAV. In our previ-
ous work [7] and that of Fitzgerald et al. [19,20], a second safety related
parameter was included which specifies the size of an area surrounding
a candidate pixel or group of pixels1 which must be free from edges be-
fore such candidates can be considered as potential SLZs. This was im-
plemented by passing a mask over each pixel(s) in the image. If the
region under the mask did not contain edges then the pixel(s) were
flagged as a potentially suitable SLZ. As a post processing step groups
of adjacent flagged pixels were merged to from larger regions which
correspond to potentially suitable SLZs.
However, a similar result may be achieved solely using dilation as a
pixel is specified as an edge in the output dilated image if E and ^S overlap
by ≥1 element [26]. We therefore determine the width, Sw, in pixels, of
the square structuring element by:
Sw ¼ ðb=Ir þ n=Ir þ u=Ir Þ; ð2Þ
where b is the required buffer size in metres to be placed around each
detected edge. Ir is the spatial resolution in metres of a single pixel, n
ð1Þ is the required surrounding neighbourhood size in metres which must
be free from edges before a pixel/group of pixels are considered as a po-
tential SLZ. The size of the UAV in metres is represented by u. An exam-
ple demonstrating the result of dilation is shown in Fig. 2 where a set of
edges (Fig. 2C) is dilated resulting in the potential SLZs displayed in
Fig. 2D.
1
Whilst at a higher altitude the size of a real world area represented by a single pixel
may be sufficient to contain the UAV, it is likely that at lower altitudes it will be necessary
to analyse an area surrounding groups of pixels.
 T. Patterson et al. / Image and Vision Computing 32 (2014) 568–578
4. Assignment of SLZ safety score
Having identified a set of potential SLZs within the input image
which are of sufficient size to contain the UAV and additionally are lo-
cated within homogeneous regions the next stage is to assign each SLZ
a safety score in the range [0–1]. This safety score is a measure of a
SLZ's suitability as a UAV landing area. For UAV safety critical contingen-
cy management such as the identification of SLZs, Cox et al. [27] propose
3 main objectives:
1. Minimise the expectation of human casualty.
2. Minimise the expectation of external property damage.
3. Maximise the chance of survival for the aircraft and its payload.
With these priorities in mind we evaluate each potential SLZ and as-
sign it a safety score based on terrain classification, roughness and dis-
tance to man-made objects.
4.1. Terrain classification
Intuitively a key parameter when determining the suitability of a SLZ
is its terrain classification, for example in the majority of scenarios it
may be assumed that grass is more suitable for landing in than water.
At this stage in development a Maximum Likelihood Classifier (MLC)
is used which estimates the probability of a pixel represented by a mul-
tivariate feature vector x belonging to class ωi by, [28]
ðxjωi Þ ¼
p ration may result in previously unsafe landing areas such as lakes or

−1=2 −1=2 1 t −1
ð2πÞ jΣi j exp − ðx−mi Þ Σi ðx−mi Þ :
2 hood of such changes may be incorporated. Secondly, an OS feature
The covariance matrix, Σi and mean vector, mi for each class i are cal-
culated during an offline training phase during which a human expert
delineates examples of each class.
Within the literature there are many types of features which may be
used to assist in discriminating between classes. These include statistical
measures derived from grey-level co-occurrence matrices [29], the use
of Gabor filters [30] and utilising colour based features such as mean
RGB within a pixel's neighbourhood [31]. It is likely that in an actual im-
plementation the input aerial image will be subject to rotation and scal-
ing due to UAV movements. We therefore focus entirely on colour based
statistical features computed within each pixel's neighbourhood as
these features are invariant to such movements thereby ensuring that
training data accurately reflects the spectral appearance of classes, re-
gardless of the UAV's pose.
In order to determine an appropriate set of features a manually la-
belled dataset was created using aerial imagery captured during manned
flight. A total of 490 samples were created for 9 classes. The terrain clas-
ses subsequently used throughout this work are, ω1 = Gorse, ω2 =
Grass, ω3 = Heather, ω4 = Path, ω5 = Scrubland, ω6 = Stone, ω7 =
Tarmac, ω8 = Trees 1 − (Coniferous), and ω9 = Trees 2 − (Deciduous).
A series of tests were conducted during which 70% of the labelled data set
was used for training and 30% for testing. Fifty iterations were conducted
for each test and the overall classification results averaged to form a
mean classification accuracy for each group of features. It was subse-
quently decided to use mean RGB and mean HSV computed within a 3
× 3 pixel window. For the labelled dataset this provided an overall
Table 1
OS feature codes with assigned prior probabilities of class membership.
OS feature code Assigned prior probabilities of class occurrence
Gorse Grass Heather
Road 0.07 0.07 0.07
Track 0.09 0.09 0.09
Vegetation 0.14 0.1 0.14
Parcel print 0.175 0.25 0.06
573
accuracy of 85.6% in comparison to 78.6% when using mean RGB and
79.1% when using mean HSV.
A key advantage provided by the probabilistic nature of the MLC
classifier is the ability to leverage in prior knowledge, p(ωi) in a princi-
pled fashion using Bayes' rule,
pðxjωi Þpðωi Þ
pðωi jxÞ ¼ : ð4Þ
pðxÞ
For the purposes of SLZ terrain classification such prior knowledge
regarding an area terrain may be inferred from feature codes specified
within OS data. Of particular relevance to this stage of the algorithm
are the feature codes for roads, paths and vegetation. To enable compat-
ibility between OS feature codes and the probabilities returned by the
MLC classifier an offline knowledge solicitation phase is required during
which a human expert quantifies the prior probability of a class, p(ωi)
given a specific feature code. A list of the feature codes used for the ter-
rain classification component and the associated prior probabilities are
presented in Table 1. There are two significant advantages provided
by incorporating expert knowledge in this way.
Firstly, whilst OS data is generally a relatively reliable indicator as to
the type of terrain in an area it is nevertheless historic in nature. As such,
new features for example, roads or paths may be constructed over pre-
viously green field areas. Furthermore terrain changes caused by precip-
itation may result in previously suitable landing areas becoming unsafe,
for example water logged fields. Conversely changes induced by evapo-
ð3Þ streams becoming suitable. Thus by using prior probabilities the likeli-
code may be imprecise. For example, the OS feature code ‘1228’ specifies
an ‘extent of vegetation’ which may refer to classes ranging from gorse
and grass to trees. Thus higher prior probabilities may be assigned
across a number of classes given an imprecise feature code.
The output probabilities from Eq. (3) are fused with the relevant
priors specified in Table 1 using Bayes' rule and subsequently assigned
membership of a class using the decision rule,


x∈ωi if pðωi jxÞNp ω j jx for all j≠1; ð5Þ
resulting in a set of classified pixels for each SLZ. A SLZ is subsequently
assigned membership to the class for which the majority of its constitu-
ent pixels belong. When knowledge in the form of OS data was fused
with the probabilities returned by colour based MLC the terrain classifi-
cation accuracy for the labelled dataset increased to 88.1%.
Intuitively different terrain types have varying levels of suitability as
a SLZ. Therefore each terrain type is assigned a suitability measure in the
range [0–1] by a human expert (Table 2). These values are allocated
bearing in mind the overall objectives outlined at the beginning of
Section 4. Highest priority is given to ensuring that expectation of
human casualty is minimised resulting in terrain type road and path re-
ceiving low suitability values. The suitability value associated with a
SLZs terrain classification is input to the terrain suitability membership
function (Fig. 3) which in turn determines an output classification of ei-
ther ‘unsuitable’, ‘risky’ or ‘suitable’ along with an associated degree of
membership subsequently influencing the overall safety score which a
SLZ receives.
Path Scrubland Stone Tarmac Trees 1 Trees 2
0.07 0.07 0.09 0.5 0.03 0.03
0.5 0.04 0.09 0.04 0.03 0.03
0.03 0.14 0.12 0.03 0.15 0.15
0.06 0.175 0.1 0.06 0.06 0.06
574 T. Patterson et al. / Image and Vision Computing 32 (2014) 568–578
Table 2
Terrain types with assigned suitability measure.
Class Gorse Grass Heather
Suitability measure 0.4 1 0.4
4.2. Distance from man-made objects
In order to ensure that expectation of human casualty and damage to
property is minimised it is heuristically speaking undesirable to land in
close proximity to man-made structures such as houses, roads or
schools. We therefore utilise OS data to assist in calculating the distance
from a SLZ to nearby man-made structures. There are two main advan-
tages provided by exploiting OS data for this task in comparison to rely-
ing solely on image processing based techniques. Firstly, an image may
contain noise such as fog or shadows thus obscuring potentially impor-
tant details such as corners. Secondly, it is possible that a man-made
structure may be located ‘off-frame’ resulting in an erroneous assump-
tion that a SLZ is located in an area free from such structures.
At this stage we focus solely on static man-made structures such as
roads, paths and buildings however as part of future work it may be de-
sirable to incorporate the ability to detect moving objects such as cars.
The Euclidean distance measure is used to compute the distance be-
tween a SLZ's centroid position and each point of a man-made structure.
The minimum distance in metres is subsequently used as input to the
man-made structure distance membership function to determine a
fuzzy classification of ‘near’, ‘medium’ and ‘far’ (Fig. 4).
4.3. Roughness
For the purposes of preserving the UAV and its payload it is undesir-
able to choose areas which may be considered rough, for example stony
areas. With natural textures such areas generally exhibit high variance
of greyscale values. Following [32] we therefore use the greyscale stan-
dard deviation of a SLZ's member pixels as a simple, albeit relatively ef-
fective approach to determining the roughness of a SLZ. An offline
training phase is conducted during which a human expert specifies ex-
amples of ‘very rough’, ‘rough’ and ‘smooth’ textures from which ranges
for class membership are computed (Fig. 5).
4.4. Combination of attribute values
In order to calculate an overall safety score for a SLZ it is necessary to
combine the attribute values of terrain suitability, roughness and dis-
tance to man-made features. Fuzzy logic is used for this stage primarily
Fig. 3. The membership functions of terrain suitability which determine the extent to which an input terrain is appropriate for landing in.
Path Scrubland Stone Tarmac Trees 1 Trees 2
0.1 0.7 0.5 0.1 0.3 0.3
as it enables human experts to linguistically describe rules in an intuitive
manner, for example if terrain suitability = suitable and roughness =
smooth and distance to man-made structures is far then a SLZ is safe.
The extent to which a SLZ is considered safe, i.e. the input safety score
(Fig. 6) is determined by the values of the three input parameters. A
fuzzy linguistic rule base is created offline containing such rules. When
the fuzzy attributes of a potential SLZ are input into the fuzzy system
the relevant rules are fired, aggregated and then defuzzified to give a
crisp numeric output which is the SLZ safety weighting. Depending on
the mode of operation (Fig. 1) SLZs with a high safety weighting are ei-
ther stored for future use or used in conjunction with the decision con-
trol process described in [8].
5. Modelling options
Whilst it may be desirable to always incorporate knowledge into the
SLZ detection algorithm there may be occasions where such an inclu-
sion is impracticable as the increased execution time which it requires
may be greater than the UAV's remaining battery life. Within this sec-
tion we model two SLZ detection options one of which incorporates
knowledge and illustrates how these models may assist with choosing
an optimal, viable solution.
We assume a log-normal distribution which is commonly used
when modelling duration data such as execution times [33]. This as-
sumption was made as the profile of the log-normal Probability Density
Function (P.D.F.) fitted the histogram of observed times. These times
and subsequently the parameters for each model, μ and σ were obtained
by executing a C++ implementation of the SLZ detection algorithm on
a dataset of 1024 colour aerial images captured during manned flight.
These aerial images are of the Antrim Plateau region in Northern
Ireland and primarily contained mountainous and agricultural terrain.
An Ascending Technologies Pelican UAV [34] equipped with an ATOM
processing board containing a 1.6 GHz processor and 1 GB RAM was
used to obtain the timings. In Table 3 the measured μ and σ parameters
are displayed for the major components of each option. It is likely that
with a state-of-the art onboard computer such as the Ascending Tech-
nologies Mastermind [35] and with further optimization and refine-
ment of code it would be possible to process multiple frames per
second. However, at this stage in development the presented timings
 T. Patterson et al. / Image and Vision Computing 32 (2014) 568–578 575

Fig. 4. The membership functions which determine if an input distance in metres from a SLZ to a man-made structure is considered as ‘near’, ‘medium’ or ‘far’.

provide a useful indication as to the performance of the SLZ detection
algorithm.
The time required to identify boundaries and perform dilation is rel-
atively constant across all images for each option with a corresponding-
ly low σ value. It can be seen that there is additional overhead incurred
by incorporating OS data for this phase. This overhead is primarily
caused by the ‘selector’ operation which reads relevant OS data from a
large shapefile and also the process of converting OS vector format
data to raster format.
As the process of computing SLZ attributes is conducted for each SLZ
the required execution time is directly related to the number and size of
detected SLZs within a colour image. Generally more SLZs were detected
when knowledge was not incorporated as there were less region and
object boundaries thereby increasing the number of potential SLZs.
Within the dataset a total of 8166 SLZs were detected when knowledge
was included resulting in a mean execution time when assigning a safe-
ty score of 0.06 s per SLZ. In comparison when knowledge was not used
a total of 9388 SLZs were detected with a mean execution time to assign
a safety score of 0.03 s per SLZ. Thus the difference in execution time be-
tween options when considered from the prospective of a single SLZ is
greater than indicated in Table 3. It should be further noted that when
knowledge is not incorporated into the SLZ detection algorithm the dis-
tance from a SLZ to man-made objects is not computed.
A key process in the overall SLZ detection algorithm is determining if
it is viable to incorporate knowledge (Fig. 1). Bearing in mind the overall
safety objectives outlined at the beginning of Section 4 we consider in-
corporating knowledge to provide a more robust and reliable option for
SLZ detection and therefore consider it to be optimal in terms of ensur-
ing the safety objectives are met. In order to determine the viability of
incorporating knowledge we use the parameters obtained from the ex-
periments to construct a model of the execution time of each option
(Fig. 7) which can be used in conjunction with an execution threshold.
If the UAV is in normal operation mode this threshold is a soft real-
time constraint representing a maximum desired execution time. This
is particularly useful if the previous execution of the SLZ detection algo-
rithm required longer than expected resulting in the formation of a
queue of unprocessed images.
Upon receiving an abort command the threshold is based upon the
UAV's remaining battery life and represents a hard real-time constraint.
Given the models and a required threshold the probability of an option
completing execution can be calculated using the Cumulative Distribu-
tion Function thus enabling the UAV to choose an optimal, viable solu-
tion. This is illustrated in Fig. 7 where a threshold of 5 s is input. Using
the models it can be computed that option 1 has a probability of 0.492
and option 2 has a probability of 0.66 of completing execution before
the threshold is breached. In an implementation of this approach to

Fig. 5. The membership functions determining if a SLZ is considered ‘very rough’, ‘rough’ or ‘smooth’.
576 T. Patterson et al. / Image and Vision Computing 32 (2014) 568–578

Fig. 6. The membership functions which determine the overall safety score which a SLZ receives.

decision making in a real-time system it is likely that an acceptable A fundamental component in the computation of a SLZ's overall safe-
lower limit would be set. Thus, for example if option 1 had a probability ty score is its terrain classification with each terrain type assigned a suit-
of completion of more than 0.6 it would be chosen. However, in this ex- ability measure (Section 4.1). In both cases all of the false negatives
ample the UAV would subsequently choose to execute option 2. Whilst were caused by misclassified terrain. When knowledge was fused into
a constraint of 5 s is used to illustrate the approach to decision making it the terrain classification component a slightly greater number of SLZs
should be noted that in a real-world implementation an abort command had misclassified terrain. This was not significant however somewhat
would be issued when the UAV's remaining battery life falls below a unexpected and to some extent most likely caused by priors not accu-
predetermined threshold which would be in the range of 1–2 min. rately reflecting the existent terrain types within small portions of the
dataset. Additionally, in both cases an overarching cause of terrain mis-
classification is likely to be low separability within the chosen feature
6. Experimental results/evaluation space for certain classes. Such examples include grass which may ap-
pear similar to deciduous trees and scrubland which can appear similar
For the purposes of evaluating SLZ detection accuracy, identified to paths. As paths and trees were both assigned low suitability mea-
SLZs within a subset of 100 aerial images were manually validated by sures, SLZs which were erroneously classified as these terrain types
a human expert using a Matlab based GUI. To collate the results we con- were subsequently assigned a low safety score.
sider a true positive (TP) to be a correctly identified SLZ with a high safe- A key advantage provided by incorporating knowledge is the ability
ty weighting, a true negative (TN) is a correctly identified SLZ but is to compute the minimum distance between a SLZ and nearby man-
subsequently assigned a low safety weighting. A false positive (FP) is made structures such as roads or paths. SLZs which are very close to
an area which is incorrectly identified as a SLZ or in an unsafe area such structures are assigned a low safety weighting as they are deemed
which is assigned a high safety weighting. A false negative (FN) is a suit- to present a risk to humans. This resulted in substantially more true
able SLZ which is assigned a low safety weighting. An overview of the negatives when knowledge was incorporated into the SLZ detection al-
SLZ detection results is displayed in Table 4. gorithm. In comparison when OS data was not used, 100 SLZs (9.6%)
Due to the boundaries specified in OS data less potential SLZs were were erroneously assigned a high safety weighting, i.e. false positives,
identified when knowledge was included within the algorithm. Howev- despite their close proximity to such structures. Furthermore, 2 SLZs
er, overall it was found that incorporating knowledge provided a more spanned a man-made path which did not exhibit steep changes in
reliable method of SLZ detection with 94.7% of potentially suitable greyscale intensity at its borders and therefore remained unidentified
SLZs assigned a correct safety score. In contrast when knowledge was by the edge detection stage. A large shadow region cast over a road by
not included there was a significant amount of false positives (10.1%) trees also resulted in 2 areas being considered as potential SLZs however
with 86.3% of potential SLZs being assigned a correct safety score. these were assigned a low safety score as they were classified as conif-
erous trees. We consider false positives to be the most serious type of
Table 3 error as it may result in wholly unsuitable landing areas being assigned
Timings in seconds per image for each SLZ detection option. high safety scores and therefore deemed safe. This may subsequently
Task Option 1 Option 2 have potentially catastrophic consequences for humans, property and
incl. knowledge no knowledge the UAV and its payload.
μ σ μ σ
7. Conclusions/future work
Potential SLZ detection
Boundary identification 0.15 0.1 0.093 0.009
Dilation 0.2 0.05 0.144 0.03 Within this paper we have presented an autonomous approach to
SLZ detection which utilises colour aerial imagery and additionally has
Compute SLZ attributes
Terrain classification 0.81 1.01 0.656 0.82 the potential to incorporate external knowledge in the form of OS
Roughness 0.032 0.03 0.034 0.03 data. We propose incorporating knowledge into the potential SLZ detec-
Distance to man-made objects 0.0006 0.0001 NA NA tion phase by combining the boundaries specified in OS data with the
Misc. functions 0.435 0.03 0.325 0.026 results of edge detection thus providing a measure of robustness against
Total time .63 .04 .254 .857
image noise. We further use knowledge in the assignment of safety
 T. Patterson et al. / Image and Vision Computing 32 (2014) 568–578
Fig. 7. P.D.F. of execution time for each option along with example execution threshold.
scores, fusing OS data with the probabilities of class membership
returned by a MLC using Bayes' rule. Additionally, the distance between
a SLZ and nearby man-made structures are computed enabling SLZs
which are close to such structures to be assigned a low safety score
thereby helping minimise the expectation of human casualty.
Whilst the boundaries of many manmade features exhibit sudden
changes in greyscale intensity and are thus identified during the edge
detection stage, it may be useful to consider additional manmade clas-
ses that are likely to obstruct a UAV's flight path. One such example is
power pylons which may not be explicitly represented in OS data. Au-
tonomously identifying such structures in 3D space would require
see-and-avoid capabilities such as those described in [36] and is there-
fore likely to form an important part of an overall UAV safety system.
A key potential improvement to the SLZ detection algorithm may be
to consider sequences of images, i.e. video, as opposed to considering
the images in isolation. When used in conjunction with an estimate of
the UAV's motion and feature descriptors such as SIFT, such sequences
of imagery would enable moving objects such as animals to be detected
thus forming an important part of a real-world implementation. A fur-
ther area of future work may be to incorporate additional knowledge
in the form of DTMs thus enabling the slope of a SLZ to be taken into
consideration.
Within this paper we show that by using knowledge the accuracy of
potential SLZ detection and the subsequent assignment of safety scores
can be improved. Overall 94.7% of detected SLZs were assigned a correct
safety score when knowledge was incorporated in comparison to 86.3%
when knowledge was omitted. Whilst incorporating knowledge into
the algorithm provides a more reliable method of SLZ detection there
is an additional computational overhead incurred resulting in increased
execution time. Therefore, due to the real-time nature of the problem of
SLZ detection, and the potential, hard constraints imposed by remaining
battery life it may not always be practicable to include knowledge. We
therefore model the execution times of two SLZ detection options and
demonstrate how they could be used to assist a UAV in autonomously
choosing an optimal, viable solution.
Results are presented based on colour aerial imagery captured dur-
ing manned flight of the Antrim Plateau region in Northern Ireland. A
Table 4
Validated results based on SLZs detected within 100 images.
TP TN FP FN
Incl. knowledge 688 (76%) 169 (18.7%) 0 47 (5.3%)
No knowledge 807 (78%) 86 (8.3%) 104 (10.1%) 37 (3.6%)
577
main advantage of utilising such imagery at this stage is that it is geo-
registered thereby enabling OS data to be readily incorporated into
the algorithm. Whilst this imagery has enabled us to perform a proof-
of-concept implementation and evaluation of the SLZ detection algo-
rithm an immediate extension of this work is to implement the ap-
proach using real and thus potentially noisy UAV aerial imagery. This
is likely to present a number of technical challenges however it will en-
able us to further refine and validate the approach thereby helping to
ensure the real-world usefulness of the SLZ detection algorithm. It is
hoped that this will ultimately increase the safety of autonomous UAV
systems thus expediting their integration into civilian airspace.
Acknowledgements
This research was supported by a Department for Employment and
Learning studentship and through the Engineering and Physical Sci-
ences Research Council (EPSRC) funded Sensing Unmanned Autono-
mous Aerial Vehicles (SUAAVE) project under grants EP/F064217/1,
EP/F064179/1 and EP/F06358X/1.
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