System design of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) for marine environmental sensing

Technological improvements over the past decade have led to the widespread use of autonomous surface and underwater vehicles for data collection in marine environmental sensing and modeling in coastal environments. However, these vehicles and their sensors still have limitations, especially when tasked with observing highly dynamic or transient processes. We investigate the application of a small unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to the study of two such phenomena: Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs) and thermal plumes. A complete field-operable system was developed to identify and characterize HAB events through a human-monitored supervisory control system. This capability was extended with an infrared imaging camera for remote sensing of thermal plumes, enabling future work to augment the in-situ measurements of surface craft with thermal imagery from a UAV. Experiments in Singapore have led to the successful identification and subsequent study of algal blooms on multiple occasions and demonstrated the potential for observation and modeling of thermal plumes.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2013

Author dc:creator

• Leighton, Joshua (Joshua C.)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Franz S. Hover and Nicholas M. Patrikalakis.

• Mechanical Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/79161

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/79161