Development of Drone-Mounted Multiple Sensing System with Advanced Mobility for In Situ Atmospheric Measurement: A Case Study Focusing on PM2.5 Local Distribution

Abstract

This study was conducted using a drone with advanced mobility to develop a unified sensor and communication system as a new platform for in situ atmospheric measurements. As a major cause of air pollution, particulate matter (PM) has been attracting attention globally. We developed a small, lightweight, simple, and cost-effective multi-sensor system for multiple measurements of atmospheric phenomena and related environmental information. For in situ local area measurements, we used a long-range wireless communication module with real-time monitoring and visualizing software applications. Moreover, we developed four prototype brackets with optimal assignment of sensors, devices, and a camera for mounting on a drone as a unified system platform. Results of calibration experiments, when compared to data from two upper-grade PM2.5 sensors, demonstrated that our sensor system followed the overall tendencies and changes. We obtained original datasets after conducting flight measurement experiments at three sites with differing surrounding environments. The experimentally obtained prediction results matched regional PM2.5 trends obtained using long short-term memory (LSTM) networks trained using the respective datasets.

Weather Sensing in an Urban Environment with the Use of a UAV and WebRTC-Based Platform: A Pilot Study

“…Weather stations either are stationary [3][4][5][6][7][8]11], mobile [8][9][10][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20], or portable [21]. The mobile ones, especially UAV-based ones intended for weather sensing in the urban environment, usually do not alter but extend the use of stationary weather stations.…”

“…The UAVs are build as both fixed-wing ones [16,17,20,[25][26][27] and rotorcraft ones (usually multicopters [8][9][10]13,14,17,18,28,29]). The biggest advantages of fixed-wing UAVs are typically longer flight time, greater range, and greater Region of Interest (ROI) [24].…”

“…Weather stations typically provide measurements of atmospheric parameters, such as air temperature, relative humidity, ultraviolet (UV) radiation, wind velocity, atmospheric pressure, and rainfall [6]. While ambient temperature [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]13,14,16,20] and relative humidity [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]16,20] are typical measured parameters, atmospheric pressure was measured in about two-thirds of the analyzed stations [3,5,[7][8][9]13,14,16,20], and one-third of them were capable of measuring some parameters of solar radiation (e.g., luminosity [8,10] and global solar radiation [6]). The UV index was measured by only one solution [9].…”

“…For some time, weather stations were often built as Internet of Things (IoT) devices [3][4][5], which increases their availability. At the same time, the development of low-cost sensors, initially for the needs of the smartphone market, also entailed frequent use of such sensors in weather stations (e.g., [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]). This results in a reduction in the cost of weather stations, which indirectly contributes to an increase in the density of weather measurement points [7].…”

The Unmanned Systems Research Laboratory (USRL): A New Facility for UAV-Based Atmospheric Observations

“…Additionally, measurements of total particle concentration, particle size distributions, aerosol absorption and black carbon concentrations along with the trade wind thermodynamic structure over the Indian Ocean from the surface up to 3000 m above sea level (asl) have been carried out [17]. Singh et al [18] provides an overview on studies done on UAV-based air quality monitoring systems. Madokoro et al [19] developed a dronemounted low-cost sensor for in-situ observations of PM2.5.…”