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Projecte llegit

Títol: Using Unmanned Aerial Systems to locate Point Radioactive Sources

Director/a: ROYO CHIC, PABLO

Departament: DAC

Títol: Using Unmanned Aerial Systems to locate Point Radioactive Sources

Data inici oferta: 30-01-2019     Data finalització oferta: 30-09-2019


Estudis d'assignació del projecte:
    MU DRONS
Tipus: Individual
 
Lloc de realització: EETAC
 
Paraules clau:
UAS, UAS Software Architecture, Radiological detection, Radiological Localization, RPAS.
 
Descripció del contingut i pla d'activitats:
Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UASs), together with the
miniaturisation of computers, sensors, and electronics,
offer new remote sensing applications. However, there is a
lack of hardware and software support to effectively
develop the potential of UASs in different remote sensing
applications, such as the detection of radioactive sources.
With this project it is intended to design, develop and
validate an UAS platform to detect and locate a point
radioactive source and guide people to its location. To do
this a DJI drone platform will be used as well as a gimbal
Ronin-MX to fix the radiological locator.
The project will be divided in the following structure:
 The first thing to do is to familiarize with the new
sensor, the radiological locator, the DJI platform,
the API used to extract information from the drone
and the software used to execute missions, called
RIMA.
 After this familiarization it is needed to create an
API to extract all the data from the radiological
locator and passed it to the RIMA software.
 In RIMA it will also be necessary to create or modify
the GCS to see all the data from the sensor during
the flights.
 Once all the system is working with RIMA, and the
locator is working properly, the FPV part should be
implemented. In this part the video stream coming
from a camara set on the platform will be modified
to offer the pilot a visual help on the glasses screen
to get to the radiological source.
 
Overview (resum en anglès):
There have been different nuclear disasters over the last years. Fukushima has been the biggest example during the last ten years but the recent event in Russia in a missile test facility is another case. When these fatalities occur, operators must go outside to measure radioactivity and find punctual sources that have been scattered around the surroundings of the accident.

In many cases, the areas to cover are really big (km2) and people is exposed to a dangerous amount of radioactive dose.

This project will focus on the creation of a platform capable of carrying out this type of searching. This platform will be based on an UAS, including a radioactive photon sensor, able to locate these type of sources. So that, the actual problems might be solved.

It will be proposed a high-level concept of operations that will define any kind of operation regarding UAS platforms and radioactivity measurements. In addition, a high automation software will be develop to implement the whole concept into real cases.

Then, a specific UAS platform will be presented to perform some tests and verify the feasibility of the operation. This platform will be composed of a flight controller with all the necessary elements to fly, as well as a radioactivity Locator to take the radioactivity measurements, and a laser altimeter to maintain an adequate flight level.

To sum up, the outcome of this project is an automatic software and a set of operation directives that will enable the searching of radioactive punctual sources by means of Unmanned Aircraft Vehicles, hence improving the safeness and speed of the actual methods.

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