Use of Multi-Rotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for Radioactive Source Search

Abstract

In recent years, many radioactive sources have been lost or stolen during use or transportation. When the radioactive source is lost or stolen, it is challenging but imperative to quickly locate the source before it causes damage. Nowadays, source search based on fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can significantly improve search efficiency, but this approach has higher requirements for the activity of the uncontrolled radioactive source and the takeoff sites. The aim of this study was to design and demonstrate a platform that uses low-cost multi-rotor UAVs to automatically and efficiently search for uncontrolled radioactive sources even with lower activity. The hardware of this platform consists of a multi-rotor UAV, radiation detection sensor, main control module, gimbal and camera, and ground control station. In the search process, the ground control station and UAV communicate wirelessly in real time. To accommodate different search scenarios, the study proposed three search algorithms with a theoretical comparison. Then, field experiments based on the traversal search algorithm showed that the search system based on multi-rotor UAVs could effectively and accurately conduct contour mapping of a region and locate the radioactive source with an error of 0.32 m. The platform and algorithms enable accurate and efficient searching of radioactive sources, providing an innovative demonstration of future environmental risk assessment and management.

Limitations of wireless power transfer technologies for mobile robots

“…The Matrice 600 Pro 2 represents the large class of UAV with payload capability. This allows different sensors or manipulators to be mounted to it, allowing for a larger array of tasks to be undertaken [4,18,19].…”

“…This has seen the development of various kinds of mobile robots at an unprecedented pace for operations in air, land, and water. Applications for such robots include oil and gas refinery inspection [1], underwater mapping [2,3], radiation mapping [4,5], and nuclear decommissioning [6,7].…”

Retrieval of Ice Samples Using the Ice Drone

“…IceDrone is built around a DJI Matrice 600 Pro (M600) hexcopter, which was selected because it satisfies all the requirements in Table 1. The M600 has been used in many applications because of its ease of use, lift capacity, endurance, portability, redundancy, and customizability (Boehmler et al, 2018;Li et al, 2018;Arroyo-Mora et al, 2019). The M600 features folding propellers and arms and triple redundant GPS and inertial motion units (IMUs).…”

Robust Radiation Sources Localization Based on the Peak Suppressed Particle Filter for Mixed Multi-Modal Environments

“…Compared to the existing particle filter based estimation methods [ 5 , 20 ], the main difficulties in the multi-modal radioactive scenario are illustrated as below: As the GM-type detector could just provide a noisy total dose rate in one location, Poisson based observation model could not be utilized directly in our case. Moreover, the cumulative effect and mixed radiation field invalidate the gradient prediction methods [ 24 ] while only an ambiguous hotspot could be perceived. Similar dilemma occurs in mixture models [ 15 , 16 ] as no conjugated distribution exists.…”