Unmanned aerial vehicle operation and mission planning in low light environment

A computer-implemented method for estimating an irradiance parameter of an artificial illumination source, comprising:

• acquiring a target aerial image of a geographic area illuminated by an artificial light source;
• inputting the target aerial image into a multilayer perceptron that outputs an interim estimate of the irradiance parameter for the artificial light source in response;
• rendering an interim simulated aerial image representative of the target aerial image using the digital surface model, the location of the artificial light source, and the interim estimate of the irradiance parameter for the artificial light source;
• calculating a loss value with a loss function based on a comparison between the target aerial image and the interim simulated aerial image;
• updating parameters of the multilayer perceptron to reduce the loss value and configure the multilayer perceptron to subsequently revise the interim estimate of the irradiance parameter for the artificial light source;
• rendering a simulated aerial image representative of the geographic area using a digital surface model of the geographic area, a location of the artificial light source, and an irradiance parameter estimate for the artificial light source;
• identifying one or more regions within the geographic area as having sufficient lighting based on the simulated aerial image;
• and
• instructing the UAV to perform an action based on the one or more regions within the geographic area identified as having sufficient artificial light illumination.

At least one non-transitory computer-readable medium storing instructions that, when executed by a control system of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), will cause the UAV to perform operations comprising:

• acquiring perception sensor readings of the UAV operating within a geographic area;
• selecting or rendering a simulated aerial image representative of the geographic area illuminated by one or more artificial light sources using a night terrain model;
• identifying one or more regions within the geographic area as having sufficient lighting from the one or more artificial light sources based on the simulated aerial image;
• and
• instructing the UAV to perform an action based on the one or more regions within the geographic area identified as having sufficient artificial light illumination.