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Title:

Use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for Radioactive Source Seeking

Accession Number:

01658555

Record Type:

Component

Abstract:

In recent years, many radioactive sources have been lost or stolen during use or transportation. When the radioactive source is lost or stolen, that is, it becomes an uncontrolled radioactive source, how to conduct efficient and orderly searching has been a hot research topic. The aim of this study was to search the uncontrolled radioactive source automatically and efficiently using low-cost multi-rotor unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The hardware of the searching system consisted of unmanned aerial vehicle, radiation detection sensor, main control module, gimbal and camera and ground control system. In the searching process, ground control station and UAV communicated wirelessly in real-time. Three searching algorithms were put forward in this study to accommodate different searching scenarios. Experiments showed that the searching system based on multi-rotor UAV can effectively and accurately conduct contour mapping of a region and locate the radiation source in a region. Compared with fixed wing UAVs, the multi-rotor UAVs can hover over the radioactive source after searching for it, which is convenient for subsequent emergency treatment. This indicates that the uncontrolled radioactive source searching system based on multi-rotor UAVs can perform operations such as crawling after finding a radioactive source, rather than circling around the radioactive source.

Supplemental Notes:

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AT040 Standing Committee on Transportation of Hazardous Materials.

Report/Paper Numbers:

18-04906

Language:

English

Authors:

Li, Bai
Li, Chao
Peng, Zhong-Ren

Pagination:

8p

Publication Date:

2018

Conference:

Transportation Research Board 97th Annual Meeting

Location: Washington DC, United States
Date: 2018-1-7 to 2018-1-11
Sponsors: Transportation Research Board

Media Type:

Digital/other

Features:

Figures; References; Tables

Subject Areas:

Aviation; Energy; Planning and Forecasting; Security and Emergencies

Source Data:

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2018 Paper #18-04906

Files:

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Created Date:

Jan 8 2018 11:13AM