Small Scale Unmanned Aircraft for Environmental Monitoring

• Author / Creator

  Yuen, James D

• Advances in sensor technology and unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) have created the opportunity for low cost aerial monitoring. As much of this development is not tailored for remote sensing applications, a custom built UAS was used to test the feasibility of inexpensive monitoring over forested and farmland case studies. This system flew autonomously at 50 m altitude above ground level, to create visual wavelength maps with 3 cm resolution and better than 5 m horizontal accuracy. Images were collected with 2 m spot size point spectrometer readings at 4 Hz, for identification of specific compounds. In test runs, approximately 15 acres were surveyed in just over 9 minutes. Methods developed can be applied to industrial monitoring applications such as tailings pond surface moisture content estimation and petroleum leak detection for pipelines.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Low cost
  • UAS
  • UAV
  • Remote sensing
  • Robotic
  • Spectral
  • Mapping

• Graduation date

  Fall 2014

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Master of Science

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R3PX0C

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.