Turbulence in UAV-based air quality measurements

Keywords: UAV, drone, air pollution, gaseous plumes, air quality
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Tuesday
Session Start / End Time: 3/1/2022 09:40 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 3/1/2022 11:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 24

Abstract

A popular strategy when tracking gaseous plumes using an Unoccupied Aerial Vehicle (UAV) is to discretize the volume of interest into a searchable grid. The UAV moves through the grid, hovering at each point while an observation is collected by onboard sensors. Once the grid-like search is complete, a raster map of concentrations can be created using the observations collected. A discretized search strategy expects an uncontaminated observation at each grid point. This requires the UAV to cause minimal disturbance to the overall field when moving. However, as the UAV enters and exits each voxel of the grid, downwash and turbulence caused by the maneuvers of the UAV can distort the field. It is therefore useful to quantify the magnitude of disturbance caused by the mobility of the UAV, as well as the time taken for the turbulence to stabilize before a reliable observation can be made. With the ability to account for turbulence, observations collected by the UAV may be equivalent to those collected by a network of stationary samplers mounted at each point of the grid. The purpose of this study is to validate observations of air quality taken onboard an UAV. By demonstrating the ability for a UAV-based system to reliably monitor outdoor air quality at a level comparable to stationary samplers, this study demonstrates how UAVs may be used as robust tools for mobile monitoring.