Geert De Cubber

• PhD. in Engineering
• Researcher at Royal Military Academy

This paper aims to introduce a standardized test methodology for drone detection, tracking and identification systems. It is the aim that this standardized test methodology for assessing the performance of counter-drone systems will lead to a much better understanding of the capabilities of these solutions. This is urgently needed, as there is an i...

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have become increasingly important in maritime operations due to their ability to perform complex tasks that are difficult or dangerous for humans. However, accurate localization of these UAVs in maritime environments especially during landing operation on maritime vessels remains a challenge, particularly in GNSS de...

The integration of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), commonly referred to as drones, into various sectors including agriculture, healthcare, and military operations has transformed industries and services. While drones offer numerous benefits, they have also been exploited by terrorists and criminals for illicit activities, such as smuggling and sur...

Given the growing threat posed by the widespread availability of unmanned aircraft systems (UASs), which can be utilised for various unlawful activities, the need for a standardised method to evaluate the effectiveness of systems capable of detecting, tracking, and identifying (DTI) these devices has become increasingly urgent. This article draws u...

This paper introduces a quantitative methodology for assessing drone pilot performance, aiming to reduce drone-related incidents by understanding the human factors influencing performance. The challenge lies in balancing evaluations in operationally relevant environments with those in a standardized test environment for statistical relevance. The p...

As drones are getting more and more entangled in our society, more untrained users require the capability to operate them. This scenario is to be achieved through the development of artificial intelligence capabilities assisting the human operator in controlling the Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) and processing the sensor data, thereby alleviating th...

This paper introduces a quantitative methodology for assessing drone pilot performance, aiming to reduce drone-related incidents by understanding the human factors influencing performance. The challenge lies in balancing evaluations in operationally relevant environments with those in a standardized test environment for statistical relevance. The p...

As robots are more and more leaving the protected lab environment, they are also more and more used for civil security and military use cases. Very often, these civil and military robotics development projects share large similarities and there is a substantial potential for dual use. In this paper, we will present and study three practical Europea...

Robotics education has become increasingly important as automation and artificial intelligence technologies continue to transform industries worldwide. However, classroom lectures and simulations alone are often insufficient to develop students’ practical skills in designing, building, and programming robots. In this paper, we present two types of...

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have become increasingly popular in recent years due to their versatility in performing various tasks such as aerial photography, surveillance, and search and rescue. However, there is a growing demand for UAVs to operate in challenging environments with difficult terrains to take off or land on. Another challenge in...

Artificial Intelligence for the detection of explosive devices (AIDED) is a European project aiming to research and integrate cutting-edge technologies to; i) Identify both unconventional and conventional explosive devices, such as buried mines and IEDs; ii) Plan missions both offline and in real-time. To achieve this, the system uses AI-machine le...

As the number of drone operations increases, so does the risk of incidents with these novel, yet sometimes dangerous unmanned systems. Research has shown that over 70% of drone incidents are caused by human error, so in order to reduce the risk of incidents, the human factors related to the operation of the drone should be studied. However, this is...

Thanks to advances in embedded computing and robotics, intelligent Unmanned Ground Systems (UGS) are used more and more in our daily lives. Also in the military domain, the use of UGS is highly investigated for applications like force protection of military installations, surveillance, target acquisition, reconnaissance, handling of chemical, biolo...

As unmanned systems are increasingly being deployed in real-world use case scenarios, there are also more and more situations where the deployment of multi-agent robotic systems provides significant added value. However, deploying multi-robot systems requires careful consideration of the system architecture to enable seamless collaboration between...

The number of small drones and drone operations is expanding and proliferating tremendously. However, there is a problem. Drones crash. Often. When they do, international studies show that over 70% of the drone crashes can be related to human factors. Combining these two facts, it is clear that - if we want to avoid a massive number of drone incide...

Unmanned maritime systems (UMS) can provide important benefits for maritime law enforcement agencies for tasks such as area surveillance and patrolling, especially when they are able to work together as one coordinated system. In this context, this paper proposes a methodology that optimises the coverage of a fleet of UMS, thereby maximising the op...

This report describes the research and experiment efforts of the NATO STO group IST-149-RTG Capability Concept Demonstrator for Interoperability within Unmanned Ground Systems and C2. Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs) are becoming increasingly relevant in the modern battle-space. The main purpose of the group was to investigate possible standards for...

Considering the ever-increasing use of drones in a plentitude of application areas, the risk is that also an ever-increasing number of drone incidents would be observed. Research has shown that a large majority of all incidents with drones is due not to technological, but to human error. An advanced risk-reduction methodology, focusing on the human...

In order for unmanned maritime systems to provide added value for maritime law enforcement agencies, they have to be able to work together as a coordinated team for tasks such as area surveillance and patrolling. Therefore, this paper proposes a methodology that optimizes the coverage of a fleet of unmanned maritime systems, and thereby maximizes t...

The paper proposes a novel framework for registering and segmenting 3D point clouds of large-scale natural terrain and complex environments coming from a multisensor heterogeneous robotics system, consisting of unmanned aerial and ground vehicles. This framework involves data acquisition and pre-processing, 3D heterogeneous registration and integra...

This book presents recent studies of unmanned robotic systems and their applications. With its five chapters, the book brings together important contributions from renowned international researchers. Unmanned autonomous robots are ideal candidates for applications such as rescue missions, especially in areas that are difficult to access. Swarm robo...

Now that the use of drones is becoming more common, the need to regulate the access to airspace for these systems is becoming more pressing. A necessary tool in order to do this is a means of detecting drones. Numerous parties have started the development of such drone detection systems. A big problem with these systems is that the evaluation of th...

p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"> This article considers the development of a system to enable the in-flight-launch of one aerial system by another. The article discusses how an optimal release mechanism was developed taking into account the aerodynamics of one specific mothership and child Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). Furthermore, it discusses th...

Due to the increase in embedded computing power, modern robotic systems are capable of running a wide range of perception and control algorithms simultaneously. This raises the question where to optimally allocate each robotic cognition process. In this paper, we present a concept for a novel load distribution approach. The proposed methodology ado...

Since a few decades, the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are considered precious tools for different military applications such as the automatic surveillance in outdoor environments. Nevertheless, the onboard implementation of image and video processing techniques poses many challenges like the high computational cost and the high bandwidth require...

The video surveillance of sensitive facilities or borders poses many challenges like the high bandwidth requirements and the high computational cost. In this paper, we propose a framework for detecting and tracking pedestrians in the compressed domain using thermal images. Firstly, the detection process uses a conjunction between saliency maps and...

The technological evolution is introducing in a fast pace new technologies in our everyday lives. As always, these new technologies can be applied for good causes and thereby give us the opportunity to do many interesting new things. Think for example about drones transporting blood samples between hospitals. However, like always, new technologies...

As the commercial and recreative use of small unmanned aerial vehicles or drones is booming, so are the military and criminals starting to use these systems more and more. Due to improvements in flight stability, autonomy and payload capacity it becomes possible to equip these drones with explosive charges, making them threat agents where tradition...

This paper considers the development of a system to enable the in-flight-launch of one aerial system by another. The paper will discuss how an optimal release mechanism was developed, taking into account the aerodynamics of one specific mother and child UAV. Furthermore, it will discuss the PID-based control concept that was introduced in order to...

As drones are more and more entering our world, so comes the need to regulate the access to airspace for these systems. A necessary tool in order to do this is a means of detecting these drones. Numerous commercial and non-commercial parties have started the development of such drone detection systems. A big problem with these systems is that the e...

During the Humanitarian-demining actions, teleoperation of sensors or multi-sensor heads can enhance-detection process by allowing more precise scanning, which is use-ful for the optimization of the signal processing algorithms. This chapter summarizes the technologies and experiences developed during 16 years through national and/or European-funde...

Video surveillance from airborne platforms can suffer from many sources of blur, like vibration, low-end optics, uneven lighting conditions, etc.. Many different algorithms have been developed in the past that aim to recover the deblurred image but often incur substantial CPU-time, which is not always available on-board. This paper shows how a “str...

The use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV)s has spread in various fields such as surveillance and search and rescue purposes. This leads to many research efforts that are focusing on the detection of people using aerial images. However, these platforms have limited resources of power and bandwidth which cause many restrictions and challenges. The us...

http://ietdl.org/t/usnqnb The increasing risks of border intrusions or attacks on sensitive facilities and the growing availability of surveillance cameras lead to extensive research efforts for robust detection of pedestrians using images. However, the surveillance of borders or sensitive facilities poses many challenges including the need to set...

This paper introduces a novel iterative 3D mapping framework for large scale natural terrain and complex environments. The framework is based on an Iterative-Closest-Point (ICP) algorithm and an iterative error minimization mechanism, allowing robust 3D map registration. This was accomplished by performing pairwise scan registrations without any pr...

This paper proposes a very effective method for data handling and preparation of the input 3D scans acquired from laser scanner mounted on the Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV). The main objectives are to improve and speed up the process of outliers removal for large-scale outdoor environments. This process is necessary in order to filter out the noise...

The video surveillance of sensitive facilities or borders poses many challenges like the high bandwidth requirements and the high computational cost. In this paper, we propose a framework for detecting and tracking pedestrians in the compressed domain using thermal images. Firstly, the detection process uses a conjunction between saliency maps and...

In the event of large crises (earthquakes, typhoons, floods, ...), a primordial task of the fire and rescue services is the search for human survivors on the incident site. This is a complex and dangerous task, which - too often - leads to loss of lives among the human crisis managers themselves. This book explains how unmanned search can be added...

The general objective of this paper is to highlight the requirements for an effective Counter Remotely Piloted Aircraft System (C-RPAS) against malicious and terrorist use cases of Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPASs). An effective Counter Remotely Aircraft System is a major objective of many researchers and industries. Their activity is stron...

Overview of the SafeShore threat agent detection system

Search-and-rescue operations have recently been confronted with the introduction of robotic tools that assist the human search-and-rescue workers in their dangerous but life-saving job of searching for human survivors after major catastrophes. However, the world of search and rescue is highly reliant on strict procedures for the transfer of message...

Search and rescue operations, in the aftermath of natural or manmade disasters, are complex and dangerous tasks that can benefit a lot from the use of robotics. Well known examples include the Fukushima and Costa Concordia accidents. However, a large gap exists between what is envisioned that robots can do, and what they effectively do in real situ...

In the quest for fully autonomous unmanned aerial systems (UAS), multiple challenges are faced. For enabling autonomous UAS navigation in indoor environments, one of the major bottlenecks is the capability to autonomously traverse narrow 3D - passages, like staircases. This paper presents a novel integrated system that implements a semi-autonomous...

This paper presents an operational test and validation approach for the evaluation of the performance of a range of marine, aerial and ground search and rescue robots. The proposed approach seeks to find a compromise between the traditional rigorous standardized approaches and the open-ended robot competitions. Operational scenarios are defined, in...

The two FP7 projects ICARUS and DARIUS share a common objective which is to integrate the unmanned platforms in Search and Rescue operations and assess their added value through the development of an integrated system that will be tested in realistic conditions on the field. This paper describes the concept of both projects towards an optimized int...

Autonomous robotic systems which aspire to navigate through rough unstructured terrain require the capability to reason about the environmental characteristics of their environment. As a first priority, the robotic systems need to assess the degree of traversability of their immediate environment to ensure their mobility while navigating through th...

In this paper, we provide a report on a real relief operation mission, jointly conducted by two European research projects, in response to the massive flooding in the Balkan in spring 2014. Un Unmanned Aerial System was deployed on-site in collaboration with traditional relief workers, to support them with damage assessment, area mapping, visual in...

In this paper, a Training and Support system for Search and Rescue operations is described. The system is a component of the ICARUS project (http://www.fp7-icarus.eu) which has a goal to develop sensor, robotic and communication technologies for Human Search And Rescue teams. The support system for planning and managing complex SAR operations is im...

In the event of a large crisis (think about typhoon Haiyan or the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan), a primordial task of the rescue services is the search for human survivors on the incident site. This is a complex and dangerous task, which often leads to loss of lives among the human crisis managers themselves. The introduction of unmanned...

In this paper, we present a ground robotic system which is developed to deal with rough outdoor conditions. The platform is to be used as an environmental monitoring robot for 2 main application areas: - Humanitarian demining: The vehicle is equipped with a specialized multi-channel metal detector array. An unmanned aerial system supports it for lo...

This project paper provides a report on a real relief operation mission, jointly conducted by two European research projects, in response to the massive flooding in the Balkan in spring 2014. Un Unmanned Aerial System was deployed on-site in collaboration with traditional relief workers, to support them with damage assessment, area mapping, visual...

This paper describes results of the European project ICARUS in the field of search and rescue robotics. It presents the software architectures of two unmanned ground vehicles (a small and a large one) developed in the context of the project. The architectures of the two vehicles share many similarities. This al-lows for component reuse and thus red...

The ICARUS EU-FP7 project deals with the devel-opment of a set of integrated components to assist search and rescue teams in dealing with the difficult and dangerous, but life-saving task of finding human survivors. The ICARUS tools consist of assistive unmanned air, ground and sea vehicles, equipped with victim detection sensors. The unmanned vehi...

This paper describes the features and concepts behind the Command, Control and Intelligence (C2I) system under development in the ICARUS project, which aims at improving crisis management with the use of unmanned search and rescue robotic appliances embedded and integrated into existing infrastructures. A beneficial C2I system should assist the sea...

The main focus of the work presented in this paper is to investigate the application of certain biologically-inspired control strategies in the field of autonomous mobile robots, with particular emphasis on multi-robot navigation systems. The control architecture used in this work is based on the behavior-based approach. The main argument in favor...

In this study, the authors propose a framework for stereo-motion integration for dense depth estimation. They formulate the stereo-motion depth reconstruction problem into a constrained minimisation one. A sequential unconstrained minimisation technique, namely, the augmented Lagrange multiplier (ALM) method has been implemented to address the resu...

A primordial task of the fire-fighting and rescue services in the event of a large crisis is the search for human survivors on the incident site. This task, being complex and dangerous, often leads to loss of lives. Unmanned search and rescue devices can provide a valuable tool for saving human lives and speeding up the search and rescue operations...