The Effect of a Flow Field on Chemical Detection Performance of Quadrotor Drone

Abstract

The determination of a suitable sensor location on quadrotor drones is a very important issue for chemical reconnaissance platforms because the magnitude and direction of air velocity is different for each location. In this study, we investigated a customized chemical reconnaissance system consisting of a quadrotor drone and a chip-sized chemical sensor for detecting dimethyl-methylphosphonate (DMMP; a Sarin simulant) and investigated the chemical detection properties with respect to the sensor position through indoor experiments and particle image velocimetry (PIV) analysis of the system. The PIV results revealed an area free of vortex–vortex interaction between the drone rotors, where there was distinctly stable and uniform chemical detection of DMMP. The proposed chemical reconnaissance system was found to be realistic for practical application.

Development and performance testing of a miniaturized multi-sensor system combining MOX and PID for potential UAV application in TIC, VOC and CWA dispersion scenarios

“…Moreover, for PID A sensor the response is linearly proportional to the amount of pollutant in this range of concentration as per Lambert-Beer equation, while the number of counts registered by MOX A, as per its intrinsic characteristic (Figs. 15,16), tends to a plateau with the increasing of contamination.…”

“…Regarding the most suitable positioning of the sensors on the UAV, computational fluiddynamic simulations [16] are available to evaluate the influence that rotor turbulence had on the detection and identification capability and the best compromise between different configurations. A specific study on the best sensor location for the detection of particulate matter in case of a radioactive release had been already published [17].…”

The Prototype Monitoring System for Pollution Sensing and Online Visualization with the Use of a UAV and a WebRTC-Based Platform

“…The optimal location of the sensors requires a study of the airflows produced by the rotors and the analysis of the quad-rotor aerodynamics [17,41] and the hexa-rotor aerodynamics [40]. Such studies, performed using simulations [17,[42][43][44][45][46] and experiments in the real environment [17,40,41,[45][46][47][48][49], showed that the calmest place, with the weakest airflow, is the middle part of the UAV. This applies to both small, several-hundred-gram UAVs [17], to medium-sized ones [41,42,45,47,48] and large, several-kilogram ones [40] as well.…”

Design of Miniaturized Sensors for a Mission-Oriented UAV Application: A New Pathway for Early Warning

“…Different approaches have been compared for gas release localization with mobile platforms, and gas sensing systems have been developed and tested specifically for Volatile Organic Chemicals (VOC) [2] and Chemical Warfare Agents (CWAs) [3] localization and mapping. Numerous other applications have demonstrated the drones' suitability to be equipped with gas sensors for environmental monitoring and surveillance operations [4,5], [6][7][8][9][10][11] and also for radiation monitoring after a nuclear disaster [12][13][14]. Hence, this study aimed at evaluating a drone sensor platform to increase first responders' safety during early survey missions and improve monitoring activities in critical contexts.…”