Application of Miniaturized Sensors to Unmanned Aerial Systems, A New Pathway for the Survey of Polluted Areas: Preliminary Results

With the aim to have risk mitigation for people and first responders, active remote sensing standoff detection is a fruitful technology, both in case of accidental (natural or incidental) or intentional dispersion in the environment of volatile chemical substances. Nowadays, several laser-based methodologies could be put in place to perform extensive areal monitoring. The present study regards the proposal for a new system architecture derived from the integration of a low-cost laser-based network of detectors for pollutants interfaced with a more sophisticated layout mounted on an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) able to identify the nature and the amount of a release. With this system set up, the drone will be activated by the alarm triggered by the laser-based network when anomalies are detected. The area will be explored by the drone with a more accurate set of sensors for identification to validate the detection of the network of Lidar systems and to sample the substance in the focus zone for subsequent analysis. In this work, methodologies and requirements for the standoff detection and the identification features chosen for this integrated system are described. The work aims at the definition of a new approach to the problem through the integration of different technologies and tools in the operative field experiments. Some preliminary results in support of the suitability of the integration hypothesis proposed are presented. This study gives rise to an integrated system to be furtherly tested in a real environment.