A Descriptive Methodology for Customer Centric Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Motion Imagery Metadata

摘要

Within the current scope of fielded Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) platforms, motion imagery is the primary product delivered to a wide variety of customers ranging from the intelligence analyst to the warfighter. With the exponential growth in the amount of the imagery that is generated and disseminated, there is an increasing demand for the development of extensible and inexorably linked metadata that provides context and enhances the fundamental image product. Existing metadata implementations limit the ability to efficiently and effectively match the metadata standard to Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (S-UASs) that are often built around hardware and software that do not exhibit the data generation and bandwidth capabilities of larger platforms. An overview of the metadata user community is provided to lend insight into the varied end user needs and the system capabilities characteristic of UAV motion imagery applications. Further, a methodology for the grouping of metadata elements into a descriptive hierarchy is presented to facilitate a progressive implementation of metadata, economize available bandwidth, and a greater depth of understanding regarding the source of the imagery product through inferred information strategies.