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The characteristics and abilities of autonomous drones pose major chal­lenges for liability law. Nowadays only personal injury and damage to property on the ground are covered by strict liability (Art. 64 para. 1 Swiss Aviation Act). Injured parties are in danger of being left without legal pro­tection in the event of mid-air collisions, as claims for damages cannot be asserted on the basis of erroneous decisions by an algorithm, either through liability for wilful or negligent wrongdoing (Art. 41 para. 1 Swiss Code of Obligations) or product liability. The same applies to purely pecu­niary loss. The question of liability for wilful or negligent wrongdoing arises only if duties of care were violated when using autonomous drones. Such duties of care may ensue from permit and operating regulations. Currently autonomous flights without the possibility of direct control and beyond a pilot’s field of vision are allowed only with special permits. As international efforts show, such barriers will come down in future. Appropriate licensing and operating regulations as described in this dissertation will therefore be required. At the same time it will be necessary to extend strict liability under aviation law for unmanned aircraft that are not steered by a pilot to damage in the event of mid-air collisions and to purely pecuniary damage. The specific legal formulations and their legislative implementation are proposed and discussed here for this purpose., Die Eigenschaften und Fähigkeiten autonomer Drohnen stellen das Haft­pflichtrecht vor grosse Herausforderungen. Heute sind nur Personen- und Sachschäden auf der Erde durch eine Gefährdungshaftung (Art. 64 Abs. 1 LFG) gedeckt. Bei Luftkollisionen drohen Geschädigte ohne Rechtsschutz zu bleiben, da Schadenersatzansprüche aufgrund von Fehlentscheidungen eines Algorithmus weder mittels Verschuldenshaftung (Art. 41 Abs. 1 OR) noch mit der Haftung für Produkte durchsetzbar sind. Dasselbe gilt bei reinen Vermögensschäden. Einzig falls beim Einsatz autonomer Drohnen Sorgfaltspflichten verletzt wurden, kommt eine Haftung aus Verschulden infrage. Solche Sorgfaltspflichten können sich aus Zulassungs- und Be­triebsvorschriften ergeben. Heute sind autonome Flüge ohne direkte Kon­trollmöglichkeit und ausserhalb des Sichtbereichs eines Piloten nur mit Ausnahmebewilligungen erlaubt. Künftig werden solche Schranken weg­fallen, wie internationale Bestrebungen zeigen. Dafür sind sachgerechte Zulassungs- und Betriebsvorschriften notwendig, die in dieser Dissertation beschrieben werden. Gleichzeitig bedarf es einer Ausdehnung der luft­rechtlichen Gefährdungshaftung für unbemannte Luftfahrzeuge, die nicht durch einen Piloten gesteuert werden, auf Schäden bei Luftkollisionen und auf reine Vermögensschäden. Zu diesem Zweck werden vorliegend kon­krete Gesetzesformulierungen vorgeschlagen und deren gesetzgeberische Umsetzung erörtert.

Summary: In recent years, we have been witnessing the exponential proliferation of the Internet of Things (IoT), networks of physical devices, vehicles, appliances and other items embedded with electronics, software, sensors, actuators and connectivity that enables these objects to connect and exchange data. Enabling the introduction of highly efficient IoT, wireless sensing and network technologies will reduce the need for traditional processes that are currently be carried out manually, thus freeing up the precious resources of dwindling working staff, to do more meaningful and human-centered work. This reprint aims to bring together innovative developments in areas related to IoT, wireless sensing and networking. The aspects covered include software-defined network (SDN)-based IoT networks, artificial intelligence (AI) for IoT, industrial IoT, smart sensors, optimization of energy efficiency for IoT, and wireless sensor networks, IoT applications for agriculture, smart cities, healthcare, localization and environment monitoring.

Summary: This book includes 13 papers published in Special Issue ("Visual and Camera Sensors") of the journal Sensors. The goal of this Special Issue was to invite high-quality, state-of-the-art research papers dealing with challenging issues in visual and camera sensors.

Summary: The concept of remote sensing as a way of capturing information from an object without making contact with it has, until recently, been exclusively focused on the use of Earth observation satellites.The emergence of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) with Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) controlled navigation and sensor-carrying capabilities has increased the number of publications related to new remote sensing from much closer distances. Previous knowledge about the behavior of the Earth's surface under the incidence different wavelengths of energy has been successfully applied to a large amount of data recorded from UAVs, thereby increasing the special and temporal resolution of the products obtained.More specifically, the ability of UAVs to be positioned in the air at pre-programmed coordinate points; to track flight paths; and in any case, to record the coordinates of the sensor position at the time of the shot and at the pitch, yaw, and roll angles have opened an interesting field of applications for low-altitude aerial photogrammetry, known as UAV photogrammetry. In addition, photogrammetric data processing has been improved thanks to the combination of new algorithms, e.g., structure from motion (SfM), which solves the collinearity equations without the need for any control point, producing a cloud of points referenced to an arbitrary coordinate system and a full camera calibration, and the multi-view stereopsis (MVS) algorithm, which applies an expanding procedure of sparse set of matched keypoints in order to obtain a dense point cloud. The set of technical advances described above allows for geometric modeling of terrain surfaces with high accuracy, minimizing the need for topographic campaigns for georeferencing of such products.This Special Issue aims to compile some applications realized thanks to the synergies established between new remote sensing from close distances and UAV photogrammetry.

Summary: UAVs are becoming a reality and attract increasing attention. They can be remotely controlled or completely autonomous and be used alone or as a fleet and in a large set of applications. They are constrained by hardware since they cannot be too heavy and rely on batteries. Their use still raises a large set of exciting new challenges in terms of trajectory optimization and positioning when they are used alone or in cooperation, and communication when they evolve in swarm, to name but a few examples. This book presents some new original contributions regarding UAV or UAV swarm optimization and communication aspects.