An open-source watertight unmanned aerial vehicle for water quality monitoring

Rodrigues, Paulo M. M.; Marques, Francisco; Pinto, Eduardo; Pombeiro, Ricardo; Lourenço, André; Mendonca, Ricardo; Santana, Pedro; Barata, José

doi:10.23919/oceans.2015.7404447

Cited by 18 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…We are at the moment starting the development of a custom PMB board Proceedings of the 8 th International Symposium on Mechatronics and its Applications (ISMA12), Sharjah, UAE, April 10-12, 2012 ISMA12-6 that interface the main power source (Generator or a Li-Po battery) and aircraft electronic devices, providing redundancy for the essential systems (Auto pilot, Flying Actuators, etc. ), being one of the first application for a Watertight UAV [17]. For UAV applications is essential to have some kind of redundancy and watchdog system, where the STM32F7 will be of great importance thanks to the hardware mechanisms incorporated and processing power available.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Health and Usage Monitoring System for ROS-based service robots

Pinto

Deusdado²,

Marques

et al. 2015

2015 10th International Symposium on Mechatronics and Its Applications (ISMA)

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This paper presents a multi-core processing solution for ROS-based service robots. The power management together with the control and availability of the processing resources are supervised by a custom-made Power Management Board (PMB) based on a Digital Signal Processor (DSP) micro controller, implementing a Health and Usage Monitoring System (HUMS). The proposed architecture also allows for the PMB to control the most critical robot functions in case of low battery conditions or impossibility of performing energy harvesting, thus extending the lifespan of the robot. All PMB data is recorded on a SD card so as to allow offline analyses of the robotic mission and, thus, support subsequent maintenance activities. Two different implementations of the proposed system have been fielded in two Multi-Robot Systems (MRS) for environmental monitoring, covering aerial, water surface, and wheeled ground vehicles. An additional implementation of the architecture is currently being deployed on an industrial autonomous logistics robot. These three implementations are presented and discussed.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Health and Usage Monitoring System for ROS-based service robots

Pinto

Deusdado²,

Marques

et al. 2015

2015 10th International Symposium on Mechatronics and Its Applications (ISMA)

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“…Systems such as the fixed‐wing Flying Fish (Eubank, Atkins, & Macy, ) maintain persistent observation of surface properties, but cannot detect subsurface properties. Some efforts propose amphibious UAVs (Bershadsky, Haviland, Valdez, & Johnson, ; Ribeiro, Ferreira, Gonçalves, Galante, & de Sousa, ; Rodrigues et al., ), and like that work we are interested in the advantages offered by UAVs to water monitoring, but unlike that work we seek to minimize water column mixing, which can take hours to settle. Our previous work presents evidence that sensing by a small, submerged sensor payload (

\approx 2 cm

diameter sensor,

0.7 cm

cable) does not cause a mixing disturbance that impacts water temperature measurements (Chung et al., ).…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These static sensors yield datasets with good temporal resolution but are limited by poor spatial resolution because they have to be installed separately at each location. To increase the spatiotemporal resolution, our prior work presented the first unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) ‐based water sampler (Ore, Elbaum, Burgin, Zhao, & Detweiler, ), followed subsequently by several efforts (Akamatsu et al., ; DeMario et al., ; Koparan and Koc, ; Ore, Elbaum, Burgin, & Detweiler, ; Ribeiro, Ferreira, Gonçalves, Galante, & de Sousa, ; Rodrigues et al., ; Schwarzbach, Laiacker, Mulero‐Pazmany, & Kondak, ). In most of these efforts, the UAV flies above water while connected by cable to a sensor payload below water, as shown in Figure .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sensing water properties at precise depths from the air

Ore

Detweiler

2018

Journal of Field Robotics

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Water properties are critical to our understanding and managing of freshwater systems that change rapidly with depth. This work presents an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) -based method of keeping a submerged, cable-suspended sensor payload at a precise depth, with 95% of sensor readings within ±8.4 cm of the target depth. We use a depth altimeter attached at the terminus of a 3.5 m semirigid cable as the sole input to a depth controller actuated by the UAV's motors.First, we simulate the UAV-cable-payload system with disturbances of wind, water, signal delay, and GPS drift and then use parameters discovered during simulation to guide implementation. We characterize the depth altimeter during translation and find that 95% of the readings are within ±7 mm of ground truth, with a steady-state error of ±3 mm. In field experiments, we compare the depth precision of our new method to previous methods that used the UAV's altitude as a proxy for submerged sensor depth, specifically 1) only using the UAV's air pressure altimeter; and 2) fusing UAV-mounted ultrasonic sensors with the air pressure altimeter. Our new method reduces the standard deviation of depth readings from 16.1 to 4.2 cm in winds up to 8.0 ms −1 . We show the step response of the depth-altimeter method when transitioning between target depths. Finally, we explore a longer, 8.0 m cable and show that our depth controller still outperforms air altimeter and ultrasonic methods and allows scientists to increase the spatiotemporal resolution of water property datasets.

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“…Similarly to [17], the proposed team for SAR operations at sea is composed of a USV piggybacking a UAV with vertical take-off and landing capabilities. However, in this work the aerial robot is a watertight version as presented in [18].…”

Section: The Robotic Teammentioning

confidence: 99%

A cooperative multi-robot team for the surveillance of shipwreck survivors at sea

Mendonca¹,

Marques

Marques³

et al. 2016

OCEANS 2016 MTS/IEEE Monterey

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The sea as a very extensive area, renders difficult a pre-emptive and long-lasting search for shipwreck survivors. The operational cost for deploying manned teams with such proactive strategy is high and, thus, these teams are only reactively deployed when a disaster like a shipwreck has been communicated. To reduce the involved financial costs, unmanned robotic systems could be used instead as background surveillance teams patrolling the seas. In this sense, a robotic team for search and rescue (SAR) operations at sea is presented in this work. Composed of an Unmanned Surface Vehicle (USV) piggybacking a watertight Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) with vertical takeoff and landing capabilities, the proposed cooperative system is capable of search, track and provide basic life support while reporting the position of human survivors to better prepared manned rescue teams. The USV provides long-range transportation of the UAV and basic survival kits for victims. The UAV assures an augmented perception of the environment due to its high vantage point.

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An open-source watertight unmanned aerial vehicle for water quality monitoring

Cited by 18 publications

References 12 publications

A Health and Usage Monitoring System for ROS-based service robots

A Health and Usage Monitoring System for ROS-based service robots

Sensing water properties at precise depths from the air

A cooperative multi-robot team for the surveillance of shipwreck survivors at sea

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