Low Power Greenhouse Gas Sensors for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Abstract

Abstract:We demonstrate compact, low power, lightweight laser-based sensors for measuring trace gas species in the atmosphere designed specifically for electronic unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) platforms. The sensors utilize non-intrusive optical sensing techniques to measure atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations with unprecedented vertical and horizontal resolution (~1 m) within the planetary boundary layer. The sensors are developed to measure greenhouse gas species including carbon dioxide, water vapor and methane in the atmosphere. Key innovations are the coupling of very low power vertical cavity surface emitting lasers (VCSELs) to low power drive electronics and sensitive multi-harmonic wavelength modulation spectroscopic techniques. The overall mass of each sensor is between 1-2 kg including batteries and each one consumes less than 2 W of electrical power. In the initial field testing, the sensors flew successfully onboard a T-Rex Align 700E robotic helicopter and showed a precision of 1% or less for all three trace gas species. The sensors are battery operated and capable of fully automated operation for long periods of time in diverse sensing environments. Laser-based trace gas sensors for UAVs allow for high spatial mapping of local greenhouse gas OPEN ACCESSRemote Sens. 2012, 4 1356 concentrations in the atmospheric boundary layer where land/atmosphere fluxes occur. The high-precision sensors, coupled to the ease-of-deployment and cost effectiveness of UAVs, provide unprecedented measurement capabilities that are not possible with existing satellite-based and suborbital aircraft platforms.

Simultaneous multicopter-based air sampling and sensing of meteorological variables

“…In addition, Neumann and Bartholomai (2015) and Palomaki et al (2017) showed that the onboard flight control sensors can be used to derive wind estimates from a multicopter's attitude control data. Although small and lightweight methane sensors are available (Berman et al, 2012;Khan et al, 2012), current model multicopters with a takeoff weight below 5 kg still require further miniaturization of the sensors. As a consequence, mobile investigations of vertically resolved profiles of greenhouse gases in combination with information about atmospheric state variables are not conventionally applied yet.…”

Photogrammetric mapping using unmanned aerial vehicle

“…The obtained results showed that UAV technologies have great potential to acquire such products. Other studies of a less common use of UAVs on remote sensing are presented by Laliberte et al, 2011, Turner et al, 2012and Khan et al, 2012 This paper shows a study of an UAV system used to acquire aerial images to generate orthoimages of a rural area, containing a small town. The main phases of work were subdivided into Photogrammetric flight mission, control and check points surveying, aerial triangulation, Digital Terrain Model (DTM) and orthoimage generation.…”

Lightweight mid-infrared methane sensor for unmanned aerial systems

“…More compact methane sensors are available that typically either use standoff detection for path integrated measurements [9,10], or have been targeted at high concentrations such as for direct sampling from natural gas leaks. In addition, several lightweight in situ methane sensors have previously been demonstrated for high-altitude balloon-borne or small UAS use [4,11,12]. These employed an open-path design, where air flows directly into the optical cell rather than using sampling equipment allowing for low weight and inherently high time response [7].…”