Wetland monitoring through the deployment of an autonomous aerial platform

Abstract

Wetlands in the Andean region have been altered and have been lost as a result of the agricultural frontier expansion and human activities. The disturbance of the paramo ecosystem by the destruction or alteration of the wetlands modifies the load and endowment of water to the hydrological systems, which provide water to main cities in the highlands. Therefore, the present work focuses on setting up the framework for wetland monitoring in the Andean paramo region using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). For this aim, the study was based on a mission profile using a fixed wing UAV incorporated with a RGB camera in one of the most documented wetlands in the Ecuadorian paramo region, Pugllohuma wetland. Furthermore, to assess the saturation of the wetland, field testing data has been collected to set the range values of saturation for the monitoring system. In the same way, a review regarding multispectral imagery for the assessment of water and vegetation indices is explored and highlighted for future work. This work is a first stage in the monitoring process and hence it aims to set a baseline study for the implementation of a more detailed methodology.

Hardware/Software Architecture for Research of Control Algorithms of a Quadcopter in the Presence of External Wind Loads

“…The inner control loop analyzes information from the measuring instruments, in particular information about the roll, pitch, and yaw angles, as well as the Z coordinate. The output data of the inner control loop are the desired altitude and attitude values that stabilize the position of the UAV in space [7,17,18]. The quadcopter includes two pairs of motors rotating in a counterclockwise direction CCW (motors 1 and 2) and the remaining two motors rotating clockwise CW (motors 3 and 4).…”

“…The quadcopter includes two pairs of motors rotating in a counterclockwise direction CCW (motors 1 and 2) and the remaining two motors rotating clockwise CW (motors 3 and 4). The four control variables U i are expressed as [7,13,17]:…”

“…In order to control the XY position of the quadcopter, from Eq. ( 1) can be singled out the equations related to the linear accelerations of the system on the axes X and Y [7,18]:…”

“…There are problematic aspects of designing artificial intelligence systems as a task of synthesizing the behavior of an autonomous agent, for example, in the tasks of aerial monitoring of endemic animals in the mountainous area of the Andean Eastern Cordillera (Ecuador), where the slopes are windward throughout (affected by precipitation and wind loads) and deeply dissected by rivers. In conditions that are difficult for land vehicles and humans to access, it is important to obtain accurate information about the habitat and population of animals such as mountain tapir, vicuna, deer, and other inhabitants of the high Andes to preserve the unique biological diversity in Ecuador [6,7]. This is a time-consuming process for observers, so it becomes important to collect static information for a long time in the conditions of unpredictable behavior of the air environment and the periodic absence of visual contact between the operator and the aircraft.…”

“…Known models of quadcopters allow the device to stay in the air for about 20-30 min [7][8][9]. However, when performing aerial monitoring, there is a need for a longer stay in the air for a thorough examination.…”