Abstract
Using Uncrewed Aerial vehicles (UAVs) to rapidly scan areas for potential unexploded ordnance (UXO) can provide an efficiency increase while minimizing detonation risks. We present a complete overview of how such mappings can be performed using scalar magnetometers, including initial sensor testing, time stamping validation, data positioning, noise removal, and source model inversion. A test survey was performed across disarmed UXO targets, during which three scalar magnetometers were towed in an airframe (“bird”) 10 m below a small (<25 kg) high speed (∼10 m/s) UAV to avoid magnetic disturbances from the UAV itself. Data were collected across ∼58 min of flight, with each sensor traversing ∼31.7 km to acquire dense data coverage across a 600 m × 100 m area. By using three individual magnetometers in the bird, UXO detection results across single-sensor data and several different multi-sensor configurations can be compared. The data obtained exhibited low apparent noise floors (on the order of tens of picoTesla) and retained a precision that enabled targeted modelling and removal of high-frequency noise with amplitudes of ±5 picoTesla. All of the different gradiometer configurations tested enabled recovery of most targets (including all major targets), although the horizontal configuration performed significantly worse in comparison.
Highlights
Unexploded Ordnance (UXO), such as naval and land mines, air-dropped bombs, and artillery shells, can pose considerable challenges and humanitarian risks
The Uncrewed Aerial vehicles (UAVs) system used for this study was a DJI Wind 4 quadcopter fitted with a Differential Real Time Kinamatic (D-RTK) system
The results obtained in this study include all data products made available by the data collection and subsequent data pre-processing, the inversion results obtained through the probabilistic inversion scheme, and the line decimation graphs
Summary
Unexploded Ordnance (UXO), such as naval and land mines, air-dropped bombs, and artillery shells, can pose considerable challenges and humanitarian risks. UXO typically persist in areas of past and current conflicts across the globe, such as sites of warfare during. World Wars One and Two, and can pose risks to both commercial and military operations, as well as to the general public. The UXO risk is often substantial enough to warrant preinvestigation and potential removal efforts prior to primary operation commencement. One interesting application of UAV based magnetic surveying is UXO pre-investigations, as the approach has can provide dense coverage with highquality raw data at low ground clearance [12,14]. The UAV approach minimizes UXO detonation risks to on-site operators and risks to equipment and personnel associated with low altitude flights in conventional aircraft [2,12]. We explore and document the process of acquiring such high-quality data rapidly, using a triple scalar magnetometer payload towed (via cable) 10 m below a high-speed (≥10 m/s) UAV system
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