{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,2,10]],"date-time":"2026-02-10T18:06:08Z","timestamp":1770746768514,"version":"3.49.0"},"reference-count":53,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"22","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2019,11,19]],"date-time":"2019-11-19T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1574121600000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100004070","name":"Khalifa University of Science, Technology and Research","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["RC1-2018-KUCARS"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["RC1-2018-KUCARS"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100004070","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Remote Sensing"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Urban search and rescue missions require rapid intervention to locate victims and survivors in the affected environments. To facilitate this activity, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have been recently used to explore the environment and locate possible victims. In this paper, a UAV equipped with multiple complementary sensors is used to detect the presence of a human in an unknown environment. A novel human localization approach in unknown environments is proposed that merges information gathered from deep-learning-based human detection, wireless signal mapping, and thermal signature mapping to build an accurate global human location map. A next-best-view (NBV) approach with a proposed multi-objective utility function is used to iteratively evaluate the map to locate the presence of humans rapidly. Results demonstrate that the proposed strategy outperforms other methods in several performance measures such as the number of iterations, entropy reduction, and traveled distance.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/rs11222704","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2019,11,19]],"date-time":"2019-11-19T11:30:17Z","timestamp":1574163017000},"page":"2704","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":13,"title":["Victim Localization in USAR Scenario Exploiting Multi-Layer Mapping Structure"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"11","author":[{"given":"Abdulrahman","family":"Goian","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Khalifa University Center for Autonomous Robotic Systems (KUCARS), Khalifa University of Science and Technology (KU), P.O. Box 127788, Abu Dhabi, UAE"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-0928-7904","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Reem","family":"Ashour","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Khalifa University Center for Autonomous Robotic Systems (KUCARS), Khalifa University of Science and Technology (KU), P.O. Box 127788, Abu Dhabi, UAE"}]},{"given":"Ubaid","family":"Ahmad","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Emirates British Telecommunications Innovation Center (EBTIC), Khalifa University of Science and Technology (KU), P.O. Box 127788, Abu Dhabi, UAE"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-8267-1681","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Tarek","family":"Taha","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Algorythma\u2019s Autonomous Aerial Lab, P.O. Box 112230, Abu Dhabi, UAE"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-5091-3030","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Nawaf","family":"Almoosa","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Emirates British Telecommunications Innovation Center (EBTIC), Khalifa University of Science and Technology (KU), P.O. Box 127788, Abu Dhabi, UAE"}]},{"given":"Lakmal","family":"Seneviratne","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Khalifa University Center for Autonomous Robotic Systems (KUCARS), Khalifa University of Science and Technology (KU), P.O. Box 127788, Abu Dhabi, UAE"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2019,11,19]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Naidoo, Y., Stopforth, R., and Bright, G. (2011, January 13\u201315). Development of an UAV for search & rescue applications. 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