Abstract
The use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in earth science research has drastically increased during the last decade. The reason being innumerable advantages to detecting and monitoring various environmental processes before and after certain events such as rain, wind, flood, etc. or to assess the current status of specific landforms such as gullies, rills, or ravines. The UAV equipped sensors are a key part to success. Besides commonly used sensors such as cameras, radar sensors are another possibility. They are less known for this application, but already well established in research. A vast number of research projects use professional radars, but they are expensive and difficult to handle. Therefore, the use of low-cost radar sensors is becoming more relevant. In this article, to make the usage of radar simpler and more efficient, we developed with automotive radar technology. We introduce basic radar techniques and present two radar sensors with their specifications. To record the radar data, we developed a system with an integrated camera and sensors. The weight of the whole system is about 315 g for the small radar and 450 g for the large one. The whole system was integrated into a UAV and test flights were performed. After that, several flights were carried out, to verify the system with both radar sensors. Thereby, the records provide an insight into the radar data. We demonstrated that the recording system works and the radar sensors are suitable for the usage in a UAV and future earth science research because of its autonomy, precision, and lightweight.
Highlights
During the last years, the development of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has rapidly increased to assess different environmental issues related to earth surface processes and landform responses [1,2].One of the most important reasons for this is the miniaturization of electronic components and sensors, making their installation and use more accurate and affordable [3,4]
The measurement system is easy to be used and exchange of components such as the radar sensor sensor can be performed without difficulties
To control the measurement system works of stably and the via Wi-Fi robust and wide in the use of the measurement systemThereby, works all stably andcan the via Wi-Fi is robust andseveral widetests in the use of different devices
Summary
The development of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has rapidly increased to assess different environmental issues related to earth surface processes and landform responses [1,2].One of the most important reasons for this is the miniaturization of electronic components and sensors, making their installation and use more accurate and affordable [3,4]. After the improvement reached an acceptable level, which allows building UAVs with high performances sensors at a low price, everyone is practically able to fly and operate UAVs without knowledge of the technical complexity inside the devices [5]. The UAV is already accepted in the research as well. A vast number of research projects and technical applications use UAVs to investigate, e.g., landslide and soil erosion monitoring [6,7,8,9], landmine detection [10,11], vegetation and land cover monitoring [12,13], or disaster zone surveillance [14,15]
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