Aerial drone to perform adaptive in-water sampling in marine environments

In-water measurement and sample collection solutions for environmental marine monitoring will be studied. Fine-scale responsive measurements cannot be achieved cost-effectively with satellites or aircraft. For near-surface monitoring, an unmanned aerial system (UAS) could achieve the necessary spatial-temporal sampling.
The proposed solutions deploy a payload sensor and/or sample grabber from an UAS with a winchable tether. However, the winch and tether can impact the UAS dynamics. There is almost no work which considers this especially when the payload inertia is comparable to the UAS’.
An autonomous dynamic compensation scheme will be devised for the payload in various operational states and winds. The autonomy would also provide the adaptive sampling path-planning to achieve the mission. This will be developed in the above-mentioned framework. A working prototype will be built based around a COTS (Spiri-Mu) UAS. Its performance envelope will be measured to provide verification.

Faculty Supervisor:

Mae L Seto

Student:

Cesar Rodriguez

Partner:

Spiri Robotics

Discipline:

Engineering - mechanical

Sector:

Manufacturing

University:

Dalhousie University