Large Sensors with Adaptive Shape Realised by Self-stabilised Compact Groups of Micro Aerial Vehicles

摘要

As examples of applications of such distributed sensor arrays let us discuss electromagnetic field (EMF) measurement and radiation mapping, which may result in localization of sources of radiation and EMF transmitters, for motivation in this paper. For the task of radiation mapping and sources of radiation detection, huge radiation detection sensors (often carried by a truck) have to be used to measure the intensity of radiation and also to detect direction of the emitted radiation particles nowadays. Besides the great weight and limited operability, the shape of these conventional sensors cannot be optimally adjusted to the actual situation mainly due to the large device dimensions. In the second application, large antennas need to be deployed to achieve required sensitivity of EMF field mapping and sources of transmission localization, where the size and shape of the antenna have to be optimized prior the mission with limited possibility of their alternation during its deployment. Using MAVs with available light-weight sensors in a distributed mode overcomes these drawbacks and enables to solve the mentioned tasks in an optimal way. Moreover, it enables new perspectives and approaches of analysing properties of the EMF and radiation fields, such as interference of multiple fields from multiple sources, attenuation in different environments, and reflections, in real-world scenarios, while now this research is limited to laboratory conditions. From the multi-MAV research perspective, this is a challenging example of using large groups of self-stabilized MAVs, whose shape is directly determined by the measured properties of the surrounding environment. It is one of the few examples, where the deployment of multi-MAV team is really necessary and which cannot be solved by a single platform only, as it is the case of most of the multi robot systems motivated only by reduction of overall time of the mission. The proposed approach differs from the available distributed sensor systems that enable to obtain sensory information in multiple locations. It goes beyond these systems by considering all measuring devices as a single distributed sensor in a similar way as static sensory arrays used for RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) localisation. See https://comtel.fel.cvut.cz/en/projects/rfid-locator for an example of such static array (a test of a similar technology, where each MAV of the group carries one of the small antennas of the sensor, is shown in Sect. 3).