Characterizing Snow Surface Properties Using Airborne Hyperspectral Imagery for Autonomous Winter Mobility
Abstract
With changing conditions in northern climates it is crucial for the United States to have assured mobility in these high-latitude regions. Winter terrain conditions adversely affect vehicle mobility and, as such, they must be accurately characterized to ensure mission success. Previous studies have attempted to remotely characterize snow properties using varied sensors. However, these studies have primarily used satellite-based products that provide coarse spatial and temporal resolution, which is unsuitable for autonomous mobility. Our work employs the use of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) mounted hyperspectral camera in tandem with machine learning frameworks to predict snow surface properties at finer scales. Several machine learning models were trained using hyperspectral imagery in tandem with in-situ snow measurements. The results indicate that random forest and k-nearest neighbors models had the lowest Mean Absolute Error for all surface snow properties. A Pearson correlation matrix showed that density, grain size, and moisture content all had a significant positive correlation to one another. Mechanically, density and grain size had a slightly positive correlation to compressive strength, while moisture had a much weaker negative correlation. This work provides preliminary insight into the efficacy of using hyperspectral imagery for characterizing snow properties for autonomous vehicle mobility.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 01, 2021
- Accession Number
- AD1149286
Entities
People
- Anthony J. Fuentes
- Brian G. Quinn
- Bruce C. Elder
- Sally A. Shoop
- Taylor S. Hodgdon
Organizations
- Engineer Research and Development Center