Analyzing four congressional hearings that publicly discuss the CIA’s ‘secret’ drone program, this thesis considers the interaction between publicity and secrecy in facilitating practices of later-modern warfare. Specifically, I examine the content of these drone hearings within the broader context of leaks, Obama administration speeches, and public interest in CIA drones to better understand how open secrecy engages with public oversight. I argue these hearings are deceptively productive. While they largely fail as oversight events, the hearings facilitate numerous unexpected outcomes—including the normalization and entrenchment of the CIA drone program. Paradoxically then, publicity proves essential to the maintenance and acceptance of secret programs. This project concludes by raising questions about the geopolitical implications of the changing spatiality of war when traditional means of oversight and accountability may no longer prove effective.

There have been lots of new drone applications in recent years. Drones are also often used in the field of national security forces. The aim of this work is to design and implement a tool intended for crowd behavior analysis in drone videodata. This tool ensures identification of suspicious behavior of persons and facilitates its localization. The main benefits include the design of a suitable video stabilization algorithm to stabilize small jitters, as well as trace back of the lost scene. Furthermore, two anomaly detectors were proposed, differing in the method of feature vector extraction and background modeling. Compared to the state of the art approaches, they achieved comparable results, but at the same time they brought the possibility of online data processing.

Byggbranschen genomgår för närvarande en modernisering där drönarteknik är en del av denna. Bygg- och fastighetsföretag är nyfikna på att testa nya teknologier för att förbättra sitt arbetssätt och där är drönare försedd med värmekamera ett intressant område att utforska. Genom en djupgående undersökning belyser denna rapport genom relevanta litteraturstudier och intervjustudier marknadens läge idag, fördelar och hinder vid implementationen av drönare med monterad värmekamera för termiska inspektioner samt teknikens framtida utvecklingspotential. För att redogöra de begränsningar som kan uppstå kring en byggtermisk inspektion med drönare har ett fall framförts till intervjupersonerna för att tydligare kunna jämföra drönaren med den traditionellt handhållna värmekameran. Detta för att komma fram till om drönare är ett braverktyg för bygginspektören. I resultatdelen påvisas att drönare utrustade med värmekamera kan vara ett bra komplement till handhållna värmekameror och att bygginspektörer kommer använda sig mer av drönare i framtiden. / The construction industry is currently undergoing a modernizationwhere drone technology is a part of this. Construction and realestate companies are curious to test new technologies to improvetheir way of working, where drones equipped with a thermal camera isan area that is being fully explored. Through an in-depth analysis, this report highlights through relevantliterature studies and interview studies, benefits and barriers inthe implementation of drone technology for thermal inspections andthe future development potential of the technology through relevantliterature studies and interview studies. In order to describe the limitations that may arise regarding abuilding thermal inspection with drones, a case has been put forwardto the interviewees in order to more clearly compare the drone withthe traditionally hand-held thermal camera. This is to decide whetherdrones are a good tool for building inspectors. The results section shows that drones with a thermal camera equipped,in some cases are a good complement to the traditional handheldthermal camera and that drones are to be used more by buildinginspectors in the future.

The steady growth of the e-commerce sector and the associated logisticalchallenges in the last mile, as well as the equally increasing expectations ofconsumers for parcel delivery call for innovation in the last mile. Drones androbots seem to be a reasonable alternative delivery option to meet thesechallenges. Before these technologies are used as means of transport in the lastmile, it is necessary to investigate whether it will be accepted by potentialconsumers. This thesis aims to identify the factors influencing conumser’ acceptance ofautonomous delivery vehicles for delivery in Germany. To determine thebehaviour of potential consumers, the Technology Acceptance Model wasextended by several factors from different acceptance models that seemedrelevant from a consumer perspective. In order to investigate consumer acceptance, a quantitative approach wasconducted using questionnaires. The propsed hypotheses were tested usingstructural equation modelling. Further, a multi-group analysis was conducted toindentify sociodemographic differences. The results show that price sensitivity, perceived usefulness, hedonic motivation,and perceived ease of use influence the behavioural intention of consumers inGermany to use autonomous delivery vehicles, whereas privacy security andfacilitating conditions do not have a significant effect. Further no significantdifferences were found in the multigroup analysis.

Exploration is of interest for autonomous mapping and rescue applications using unmanned vehicles. The objective is to, without any prior information, explore all initially unmapped space. We present a system that can perform fast and efficient exploration of large scale arbitrary 3D environments. We combine frontier exploration planning (FEP) as a global planning strategy, together with receding horizon planning (RH-NBVP) for local planning. This leads to plans that incorporate information gain along the way, but do not get stuck in already explored regions. Furthermore, we make the potential information gain estimation more efficient, through sparse ray-tracing, and caching of already estimated gains. The worked carried out in this thesis has been published as a paper in Robotand Automation letters and presented at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Montreal 2019.

Leaf area index (LAI) is a versatile indicator of crop growth that is used to estimate evapotranspiration (ET), monitor nitrogen status, and estimate crop yield. Traditional methods for measuring LAI can be improved using high resolution remote sensing. The aim of this study was to compare approaches for estimating LAI from UAV-derived visible vegetation indices. Coincident ground-based and remotely sensed data were obtained from two irrigated wheat fields and were sampled at a total of 5 events in 2019 and 2020. Ground-based LAI was measured with a ceptometer and remotely sensed images were collected using a consumer-grade UAV. Mosaiced orthophotos were resampled from native (0.06m) spatial resolution to increasingly coarser spatial resolutions up to 3 m by either a direct or ladder resampling method. Visible band color information (RGB) was extracted from the orthophotos at the points that LAI was collected within field and 12 different visible vegetation indices (VVIs) were calculated. Linear regression was performed to evaluate the relationships between wheat LAI and each calculated VVI for all spatial resolutions and resampling methods. Three VVIs, visible atmospherically resistant index (VARI), normalized green-red difference index (NGRDI), and modified green-red vegetation index (MGRVI), estimated LAI equally well (R2= 0.66, 0.66,0.66; RMSE=0.74,0.73,0.73; MAE=0.57,0.56,0.56) when resampled to 3 m spatial resolution with the ladder resampling method. These results demonstrate the potential to remotely estimate LAI using only RGB cameras and consumer grade drones. An additional aim of this study was to evaluate use of a remotely sensed visible vegetation index to characterize the spatial variability of LAI within irrigated wheat fields. Variation of LAI was measured with a ceptometer on random nested grids at two sites with pre-determined management zones in 2019 and 2020. Coincident digital imagery was collected using a consumer-grade unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). A visible atmospherically resistant index (VARI) LAI estimation model was applied to red, green, blue (RGB) UAV imagery using a ladder resampling approach from 0.06 m to 3 m spatial resolution. There was significant within-field spatial and temporal variation of mean LAI. For example, in May at the Grace, ID location measured LAI ranged from 0.21 to 2.58 and in June from 1.68 to 4.15. The relationship of measured and estimated LAI among management zones was strong (R2=0.84), validating the remote sensing approach to characterize LAI differences among management zones. There were statistically significant differences in estimated LAI among zones for all sampling dates (P=0.05). We assumed a minimum difference of 15% between zone LAI and the field mean for justifying variable rate irrigation among zones, a threshold that corresponds with approximately a 10% difference in evapotranspiration rate. Three of the five sampling dates had LAI differences that exceeded the threshold for at least one zone, with all three having mean LAI of less than 2.5. The VARI model for estimating LAI remotely is more effective at identifying LAI differences among management zones at lower LAI. Application of this approach has potential for applications such as estimating evapotranspiration of irrigated fields and delineation of zones for variable rate irrigation.

This study aims to examine how the emergence of modern warfare are challenging International Humanitarian Law when it comes to the protection of civilians in armed conflict. Thereby gaining a better understanding of how modern warfare is putting civilians at risk and how International Humanitarian Law is being challenged by the development of warfare. This study is a multidisciplinary study of Peace and Conflict Studies and International Law, which gives a rare perspective on civilian’s position in modern warfare. Thereby this study is not only showing the legal challenges in armed conflict but also bringing in the perspective of civilian’s position in modern warfare. This study will make use of three case studies: urban warfare, non-state actors and the use of drones in armed conflict. This study concludes that the challenges which International Humanitarian Law meets in modern warfare, is related to the need of clarifications but also a need for a greater enforcement and respect of the law by all parties of the conflict, both state and non-state actors. Lastly, there is a need for strengthening the inclusion of non-state actors in international law and strengthen International Humanitarian Law to meet the challenges of modern warfare to protect the civilians.

Unmanned aerial systems (UASs) have a great potential to enhanced situational awareness in public safety operations. Many UASs operating in the same airspace can cause mid-air collisions. NASA and the FAA are developing a UAS traffic management (UTM) system, which could be used in public safety operations to manage the UAS airspace. UTM relies on an existing communication backhaul, however natural disasters may disrupt existing communications infrastructure or occur in areas where no backhaul exists. This thesis outlines a robust communications alternative that interfaces a fleet of UASs with a UTM service supplier (USS) over a mesh network. Additionally, this thesis outlines an algorithm for vehicle-to-vehicle discovery and communication over the mesh network.

The phenomenon of strategic culture and its influence on the state behaviour has penetrated the theories of international relations only recently. The same stands for unmanned aerial vehicles. The aim of this thesis is to examine how does the United States deploy their UAVs to fight Al-Qaeda in its save heavens located in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. To be specific my intention is to determine what does in this sense the behavior of Obama's administration mean in the context of the U.S. strategic culture. The main research tools utilized in this thesis are discourse analysis and Colin Gray's model of strategic culture. In the public discourse consisting of speeches and comments made by political and military representatives I have identified all the four strategic culture variables set out in the theoretical part of the work. Moreover, the public discourse around drone deployment contains several intriguing metaphors and symbols. Furthermore, the contribution of this work is that it deals with the issue of UAV deployment within the scope of strategic culture. Keywords UAV; drones; strategic culture; Colin Gray; Alastair Johnston; Barack Obama; Al- Qaeda

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