| Abstract | Identification safe landing zones (SLZ) for Uncrewed Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) is important to ensure reliable and safe navigation, especially when they are operated in complex and safety-critical environments. However, this is a challenging task due to obstacles and UAV motion. This paper proposes a vision-based framework that maps SLZs in dynamic scenes by integrating several functionalities for analyzing visually static and dynamic aspects of a scene. Static analysis is achieved through context-aware segmentation which divides the image into thematic classes enabling to identify suitable landing surfaces (e.g., roads, grass). For dynamic content analysis, we combine object detection, tracking, and trajectory prediction to determine object occupancy and identify regions free of obstacles. Trajectory prediction is performed through a novel encoder–decoder architecture taking past object positions to predict the most likely future locations. To ensure stable and robust trajectory prediction, we introduce an optimized homography computation using multi-scale image analysis and cumulative updates to compensate UAV motion. We tested our framework on different operational scenarios, including urban and natural scenes with moving objects like vehicles and pedestrians. Obtained results demonstrate its strong performance, and its significant potential for enabling autonomous and safe UAV navigation. |
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