Position: PhD student
Section: 61
Email: ciullo_v@universita.corsica
UMR SPE CNRS 6134 Fire Project
Thesis underway on
IT, Automation and Signal Processing Engineering
Detection, monitoring and measurements of wildland fires by drone
University of Corsica, October 2015 - end 2018
Research fields
- Forest fires
- Industrial automation
- Robotics
- IT Engineering
- Measurements
- Unmanned aerial vehicles
- Multimodal stereoscopic system
- Visual and infrared image processing
Activities
- System of multimodal fusion for drones
- Development of dense three-dimensional data
- Implementation of three-dimensional data on SIG and DEM cards
- Algorithm tests for fires spreading across 30 square meters
- Techniques for creating the cards and estimating the position of a vehicle equipped with an infrared camera
- Development of the first naval drone certificate in Italy
- Development of a mini-drone for the naval environment equipped with sonar for bathymetry and an undersea camera with variable lighting to discover the remaining phosphorus bombs from the Second World War.
Awards
September 2014: Best project at the "World Lake Conference" with the "TrasiBot" project, a 6x3m unmanned, self-propelled drone boat whose purpose is to independently carry out environmental analyses of the water and air.
Significant work experience
University of Fribourg: Research and development in information technologies Research work on the "SmartWheelChair" project, a wheelchair offering in-depth vision (based on a kinect system) to independently transport disabled people in an obstacle-laden environment (SLAM system)
SiralabRobotics: Development of microprograms for autopiloting and naval drones. I was head of the Trasibot USV project. We used drones to analyse certain environments (like photogrammetry) and interact with infrared, thermal and multispectral imaging.
Testimonial
My name is Vito Ciullo and I’m 31 years old. I’m currently in the second year of my PhD at the University of Corsica.
My thesis started in October 2015 and is being done within the forest fire team. My role in the team is to study the use of a robotic system to capture information through fire. My experience in the robotics field comes from my robotics lab work conducted at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland), while I also worked as a private researcher at an Italian company called "Siralab Robotics". Before starting my doctorate, I was Project Head in the naval sector for a company called "Skyrobotic", specialised in air and naval drones. My two main projects are "SmartWheelChair2.0", developed at the University of Fribourg: it is a robotic autonomous wheelchair that enables the blind to move about in an unknown environment; and "Trasibot", a naval drone developed while I was at Siralab Robotics, and then Skyrobotic: the drone allows for an independent environmental analysis of water (in real time and based on contained water) in a small sea ??or large lake. I obtained my qualification from the University of Perugia in information engineering, with my baccalaureate thesis entitled "Functional analysis, techniques and the creation of management software to manage a library", in addition to a master’s thesis entitled "Machine Learning by a vehicle equipped with an infrared camera". During my studies I worked as a developer, first for a video games studio and then in the bank management domain.
I chose Corsica for my doctorate so as to be able to further my research and teaching activities at the University. I chose the forest fire team as I found a project closely related to the previous research work I’d done. The objective of my doctoral thesis entitled: "Forest fire protection, monitoring and measurement by drone" is to use a robotics system, in our case an air drone, to take forest fire measurements. My work entails developing an algorithm that would allow for computer vision techniques to be calculated through the images taken by drone, which are affected by vibrations and other disturbances, and then to create a software framework to do all this in an autonomous manner. I gained some experience in the first year, despite a few issues encountered with the sensor we used: you are not able to use large, more accurate sensors as they are too heavy for flight. However, I began to get some positive results which encouraged me to pursue this line of research work. This year, I worked on a new stereo-camera system, which should offer better results. The drone is currently being operated manually, but after the first promising results gained from the cameras, I plan to start developing autopilot to add an artificial intelligence dimension to the drone.