Finding buried remains using thermal images

摘要

This paper presents the use of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) platform for the inspection and documentation of historical buried structures, starting from the landscape scale up to the local and detailed scale. The combined use of RGB and thermal images acquired from this kind of platforms, along with algorithms and procedures for data registration, can be a quick and powerful contact-less methodology to discover hidden structures. In this case study, the identification of buried remains needed the implementation of new algorithms able to register thermal images with the geometrical survey from RGB data. The georeferenced images (thermal orthophotos) were then used to inspect the ground and discover buried features.