Extended Environmental Monitoring via Intelligent, Autonomous Airships

Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh PA

Investigators

Abstract

Environmental scientists who develop policies for the effective management of human activity are often thwarted by a lack of accurate information about the state of the environment. In some cases, the correct policy is not clear because the relationship between human activity and the environment is not well understood. Additional environmental data could improve such under-standing and provide the means to develop effective policies. In other cases effective policies have been proposed but additional data is required to justify the political and economic costs of implementation. However, more data by itself is not the solution. The human resources neces-sary to parse and analyze the data are scarcer than available data. What is necessary is intelli-gence to actively sample in such a way as to maximize the useful content in the data. The proposed inter-disciplinary program will investigate means of extended-term environmental monitoring. Specifically, this project seeks to endow a solar-powered airship with the intelligence to conduct extended-duration, autonomous environmental sampling. We will explore issues of configuration and design, path planning and control in the presence of weather patterns, and algorithms necessary for intelligent environmental monitoring. The intended result is an instru-mented platform for efficiently gathering accurately tagged environmental data that can stay aloft indefinitely. Airships are well suited for environmental monitoring tasks, however their potential in this capac-ity remains unfulfilled. As aerial monitoring platforms, they exhibit numerous advantages over fixed wing aircraft and helicopters. They are safer, more stable, and less expensive. They con-sume less power and are capable of extended operation. Given the intelligence to operate auton-omously and the proper sensing hardware, an airship provides a sensing platform that would be an asset to a diverse range of environmental scientists who seek to understand, remediate, and manage the environment. Potential applications of this technology include forest and crop man-agement, wetland surveys, land use assessment, monitoring of hazardous waste sites, and ero-sion quantification. Through a cost-sharing provision with Carnegie Mellon University, we will demonstrate our results on a prototype, instrumented airship to generate a characterization of air pollution. Work-ing together with a recently funded EPA Supersite in Pittsburgh, this project will employ an airship to generate 3-D profiles of air pollution and ambient particulate matter. The resulting data set will provide new insights into the vertical distribution and transport mechanisms of air pollution. New technologies cannot turn back the ecological clock but they can help environmental scien-tists push back the frontiers of knowledge and help ordinary citizens grasp the urgency of pre-serving our natural world. It is now possible to use previously classified images from spy satellites that show the extent of environmental degradation at a macro scale. This proposal will create a means of gathering dense environmental data at a much finer resolution, in a more effi-cient manner.