Stand-off measurement of industrial air pollutant emissions from unmanned aircraft

Abstract

This paper investigates the stand-off measurement of atmospheric pollutant concentrations and air quality parameters around industrial complexes. The theoretical investigation considers a robust, accurate and inexpensive measurement system based on tuneable Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR), calibrated reflectors and imaging systems. The equipment is deployed in two non-collocated components. The source component is installed on board an unmanned aircraft. The sensor component is constituted by a reflector calibrated for reflectance, a rail-mounted infrared camera calibrated for radiance and highly wavelength-selective optics. The system is conceived to perform Differential Absorption LIDAR (DIAL) measurements of selected molecular pollutants and a model-based estimation of aerosol pollutant concentrations by means of suitably developed inversion algorithm. The relevant opportunities and challenges, and the viability of the system in the intended operational environments are discussed. Numerical simulation results show promising performances in term of estimated error budget even in degraded meteorological conditions, which are comparable to the more complex and relatively costly monostatic LIDAR techniques currently available. I.

Active and Passive Electro-Optical Sensors for Health Assessment in Food Crops

“…LIDAR can be classified as monostatic or bistatic based on the use of a single aperture (monostatic) or separate apertures (bistatic) to transmit and receive. Most common DIAL systems are monostatic (single-pulsed), but these require complex and expensive components to detect the very weak backscatter by aerosol particles [ 132 ]. As the bistatic LIDAR layout reduces cost, size, weight and power compared to monostatic LIDAR one, a bistatic LIDAR system has been proposed as a cost-effective solution that can be integrated on small drones for the early detection of crop diseases [ 132 , 133 ].…”

“…Most common DIAL systems are monostatic (single-pulsed), but these require complex and expensive components to detect the very weak backscatter by aerosol particles [ 132 ]. As the bistatic LIDAR layout reduces cost, size, weight and power compared to monostatic LIDAR one, a bistatic LIDAR system has been proposed as a cost-effective solution that can be integrated on small drones for the early detection of crop diseases [ 132 , 133 ]. The extension of this method to the agricultural sector was evaluated to measure CO 2 concentrations associated with photosynthesis and respiration [ 105 , 134 ].…”

Introducing Intelligence and Autonomy into Industrial Robots to Address Operations into Dangerous Area

“…Data acquired from swarm could be exchange also with a master control unit an advise instantaneously a human if is approaching a dangerous areas; in this way it is supposed to developed a smart guiding support that provide automatic corrective actions on vehicles, such as find an alternative way or reduce the speed (Kim et al 2015). Another possible use of UxVs results to be the plant monitoring as well as evaluating flue gas emissions in different areas or by different machines (Gardi et al 2016). The benefits from this application arise because often machinery, for construction restrictions, can't mount directly on themselves the sensors for monitoring their emissions and the environment near them doesn't permit to add fixed sensor (Ishiki et al 2014).…”