Applications and Challenges in Video Surveillance via Drone: A Brief Survey

Our society is moving quickly towards smart homes and smart cities, requiring more and more deployment of Internet of Things (IoT) devices. To achieve smart urbanization, continuous surveillance is necessary. Research about video surveillance via Closed-Circuit Television (CCTV) cameras is in play for decades but poses different problems, i.e., limited area coverage, no location sharing, and tracking capabilities. On the other hand, vision sensors mounted on drones are more scalable and flexible with more comprehensive surveillance coverage. But at the same time, drones also encounter several challenges, such as limited processing and power resources, trembling camera effects in the video feed, disturbance in transmission signals, etc. Drones surveillance lacks the researcher's attentiveness, and therefore, we collect the related literature and confer their practical viewpoint broadly. This article focuses on video surveillance using drones in object detection and tracking, video summarization, persistent monitoring of the target, search and rescue operation in a hostile environment, traffic management in smart cities, and disaster management in an apocalyptic situation. This brief survey sheds light on the research gaps and profound insights of the methods used in the mentioned articles by opening up future research tracks for the Computer Vision (CV) enthusiasts using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV).