SENSORS

Development of an Autonomous Multi-Rotor Copter for Air Quality Monitoring

Nathan T Rose, Michael van den Bossche, Stephan F.J. De WekkerDepartment of Environmental Sciences,

University of Virginia

INTRODUCTION

CURRENT AIR QUALITY MEASUREMENTS

NEW APPROACH: HEXACOPTER

Recent advances in sensor technology and open-source electronics have promoted the use of low-cost sensors for air quality monitoring. At the same time, unmanned aerial vehicles are being developed, allowing for controlled vertical profiling of the lower part of the atmosphere.

This poster describes the ongoing development in our group of a hexacopter to monitor EPA criteria pollutants.

Currently, surface air quality data are collected using air quality monitoring (AQM) stations.

Vertical profiles in the lower hundreds of meters of the atmosphere are collected using tall towers with gas intakes at various heights, or with instrumented manned aircraft.

Towers and AQM stations provide limited spatial resolution; manned aircraft flights are expensive and only done intermittently.

• The copter will be outfitted with sensors to measure the following four criteria pollutants:

ELECTRONICS

Seeeduino Stalker Vs 2.3• Arduino based• SD-card storage• Interfaces with sensors

Acknowledgments. This research was partly funded by the Office of Naval Research (MURI) Award N00014-11-1-0709, the NSF (CAREER) award ATM-1151445, and the Appalachian Stewardship Foundation grant 8088628.

Multi-rotor copters, such as our hexacopter, have many advantages for air quality vertical profiling:• Vertical take-off and landing.• Ability to hover at a fixed height.• Cheap compared to tower or manned aircraft.• Easy to operate.• Can fly in a wide range of atmospheric

conditions.

Xbee Series 1• Wireless, short-range communication • Data transmission

INITIAL RESULTS: WIND

Red = tower measurements using Gill WindmasterBlack – measurements on copter using Decagon DS-2 sonicRed and black lines connect 10-s block averaged data points

An instrumented multi-rotor copter has been designed and developed in the past year and the large potential of these copters in boundary layer meteorological research has been demonstrated. Sensors have been tested and calibrated for use on the copter. The next step will be to do vertical profile measurements with the air quality sensors.

SUMMARY

Presented at: ISARRA 2015University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK.

Insert picture of AQE shield & Seeeduino board.

Pollutant Sensor Range

O3 (Ozone) MICS2610 ~10-1000 ppbv

CO MICS5525 ~ 1-1000 ppmv

NO2 MICS2710 ~50-5000 ppbv

PM2.5 Shinyei PPD42NS

• The copter is equipped with sensors for meteorological measurements:

Property Sensor Justification

Wind Decagon DS-2 Accurate at low wind speeds, small & light-weight

Temperature Omega 44203 High accuracy, fast response

Humidity SHT75 High accuracy

Pressure BMP085 Sufficient accuracy

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Insert new picture of copter?

good agreement in wind speed- and direction measurements between copter and tower measurements.

Good correlation between low-cost ozone sensor and VDEQ instrumentation

INITIAL RESULTS: AIR QUALITY SENSOR CALIBRATIONS Vertical profiles of ozone from 10 – 125m. Ascend rate: 0.5 m/s – 1.0 m/s. Frequency : 0.17 Hz.