UAV Research Centre

UAV Research Centre

Ghent University

Welcome

The UAV Research Center (URC) focuses on sensing technologies with drones through interdisciplinary collaboration. We do research on the automation of the drone flight, remote sensing, and data processing, with particular interest in precision agriculture and industrial inspection applications. The URC was established at UGent in 2019 and is a close collaboration between the faculties of Engineering and Architecture, Bioscience Engineering and Sciences.

News

Projects

GOOD

2023-2027

GOOD is a Horizon Europe project that aims to co-create, test, assess and demonstrate innovative and sustainable Agroecological Weed Management (AWM) solutions & to encourage a long-term and large-scale transition to sustainable biodiversity-based agri-food systems through the development of the first Agroecological Weed Management Network (AWMN). We are involved to develop a method that can automatically identify, classify and map weeds based on high resolution RGB and multispectral drone imagery.
More info

FOLOU

2023-2027

FOLOU is a Horizon Europe projected focusing on monitoring and reducing food losses. As one of the project partners, the URC is coordinating a work package on the development and validation of innovative tools to measure and estimate food losses. We will directly measurements of yield and yield losses in fruit orchards and vegetables, using high resolution RGB drone images. Further, we will also contribute to estimating yield losses in potato with remote sensing technology.
More info Project site

CLIMABIS

2021-2024

CLIMABIS is a VLAIO-funded project between Ghent University and Globachem. The project includes an IPM approach to control climate-intensified biotic and abiotic stress in wheat. We will try to manage yellow rust and drought stress through a three-step approach. First, prevention by using biocontrol agents and biostimulants. Next, setting up a method to monitor the condition of crops through UAV-mounted hyperspectral and thermal cameras. And lastly, according to the principles of precision agriculture, intervention with biological products combined with a reduced amount of chemical pesticides in the affected areas of the field.
More info

SMAC

2020-2022

With UAV snapshot cameras, the same area is observed manifold and under a variety of different viewing angles. The standard UAV image processing software only use one of these observations to create the orthophotos – all other observations are discarded. Yet, these multi-angular data actually reveal very relevant information on canopy properties. In the SMAC (Simultaneous Measurements of leaf Area and Chlorophyll) project, we use the full multi-angular observation to generate maps of leaf area and chlorophyll content, two parameters of immediate use for precision agriculture applications.
More info

COMP4DRONES

2019-2022

COMP4DRONES is an ECSEL JU project coordinated by Indra that brings together a consortium of 50 partners with the aim of providing a framework of key enabling technologies for safe and autonomous drones. It brings to bear a holistically designed ecosystem from application to electronic components, realized as a tightly integrated multi-vendor and compositional UAV embedded architecture solution and a tool chain complementing the compositional architecture principles.
More info Project site

ANALYST PV

2019-2021

ANALYST PV is an imec.icon research project funded by imec, Innoviris and Agentschap Innoveren & Ondernemen. The project aims at developing a fault diagnosis framework for PV power plants that relies on IoT sensors, AI-enabled root cause analysis and automatic image analysis. The ultimate goal is to optimize photovoltaic asset management and performance.
More info Project site

Meet the Team

Professors

Avatar

Amaury Frankl

Professor

Avatar

Hiep Luong

Professor

Avatar

Wouter Maes

Professor

Postdoctoral Researchers

Avatar

Driss En-Nejjary

Postdoctoral researcher

Avatar

Louis Daniels

Postdoctoral researcher

Avatar

Michiel Vlaminck

Postdoctoral researcher

PhD Students

Avatar

Ambroos Van Poucke

PhD Student

Avatar

Charles Hamesse

PhD Student

Avatar

Eline Eeckhout

PhD Student

Avatar

Gonzalo Luzardo

PhD Student

Avatar

Haijin Zeng

PhD Student

Avatar

Jana Wieme

PhD Student

Avatar

Kiara Haegeman

PhD student

Avatar

Laurens Diels

PhD Student

Avatar

Phumlani Nzuza

PhD Student

Avatar

Rafal Muszynski

PhD Student

Visitors

Avatar

Jingjing Wang

PhD Student

Avatar

Mingjing Zhao

PhD Student

Affiliated Members

Avatar

Alain De Wulf

Professor

Avatar

Heidi Steendam

Professor

Avatar

Kathy Steppe

Professor

Avatar

Philippe De Maeyer

Professor

Avatar

Wilfried Philips

Professor

Contact