Automotive Radar in a UAV to Assess Earth Surface Processes and Land Responses

Abstract

The use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in earth science research has drastically increased during the last decade. The reason being innumerable advantages to detecting and monitoring various environmental processes before and after certain events such as rain, wind, flood, etc. or to assess the current status of specific landforms such as gullies, rills, or ravines. The UAV equipped sensors are a key part to success. Besides commonly used sensors such as cameras, radar sensors are another possibility. They are less known for this application, but already well established in research. A vast number of research projects use professional radars, but they are expensive and difficult to handle. Therefore, the use of low-cost radar sensors is becoming more relevant. In this article, to make the usage of radar simpler and more efficient, we developed with automotive radar technology. We introduce basic radar techniques and present two radar sensors with their specifications. To record the radar data, we developed a system with an integrated camera and sensors. The weight of the whole system is about 315 g for the small radar and 450 g for the large one. The whole system was integrated into a UAV and test flights were performed. After that, several flights were carried out, to verify the system with both radar sensors. Thereby, the records provide an insight into the radar data. We demonstrated that the recording system works and the radar sensors are suitable for the usage in a UAV and future earth science research because of its autonomy, precision, and lightweight.

Comprehensive Investigation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs): An In-Depth Analysis of Avionics Systems

“…Another digital pressure sensor, BMP388, can also be UAV-embedded with a less sensitive operation range between 300 and 1250 mbar and has a typical relative accuracy of ±0.08 mbar [259]. This BMP388 finds application in UAV automative radar for earth/land monitoring processes [260]. Environmental sensors (a) Pressure sensors A UAV's flight control and navigation are affected by the data provided by the environmental sensors, such as temperature, humidity, and pressure.…”

“…Another digital pressure sensor, BMP388, can also be UAV-embedded with a less sensitive operation range between 300 and 1250 mbar and has a typical relative accuracy of ±0.08 mbar [259]. This BMP388 finds application in UAV automative radar for earth/land monitoring processes [260].…”

Anomaly Detection in Radar Data Using PointNets

“…In this work, we use the ARS 408-21 Long Range Radar 77 GHz Premium (ARS 408-21) sensor, which is an industrial sensor developed by Continental AG. The ARS 400 series of radar sensors was initially developed for the automotive industry and is widely used for automotive applications such as advanced driver assistance systems [6]. As already mentioned, we consider radar data as a point cloud consisting of many radar targets.…”

Transforming 2D Radar Remote Sensor Information from a UAV into a 3D World-View

“…For this reason, the use of small, low-cost radar sensors is one of the most incipient priorities in research projects related to geosciences that work within the scope of the automotive field to assess dynamic processes along the Earth's surface at different scales [39,40]. In a previous recent publication [41], it was demonstrated that the installation and use of these sensors is possible and feasible when UAVs are considered. However, the processing of the radar data to obtain a benefit was not shown by these authors.…”