Radiative Contour Mapping Using UAS Swarm

Abstract

The work is related to the simulation and design of small and medium scale unmanned aerial system (UAS), and its implementation for radiation measurement and contour mapping with onboard radiation sensors. The compact high-resolution CZT sensors were integrated to UAS platforms as the plug-and-play components using Robot Operation System. The onboard data analysis provides time and position-stamped intensities of gamma-ray peaks for each sensor that are used as the input data for the swarm flight control algorithm. In this work, a UAS swarm is implemented for radiation measurement and contour mapping. The swarm of UAS has advantages over a single agent based approach in detecting radiative sources and effectively mapping the area. The proposed method can locate sources of radiation as well as mapping the contaminated area for enhancing situation awareness capabilities for first responders. This approach uses simultaneous radiation measurements by multiple UAS flying in a circular formation to find the steepest gradient of radiation to determine a bulk heading angle for the swarm for contour mapping, which can provide a relatively precise boundary of safety for potential human exploration.