System design of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) for marine environmental sensing
Name
846641730-MIT.pdf
Description
Full printable version
Size
3.48 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
61789febf02990ef8d72b4ec003bb31f
Author(s)
Leighton, Joshua (Joshua C.)
Advisor(s)
Franz S. Hover and Nicholas M. Patrikalakis.
Alternative Title
System design of a UAV for marine environmental sensing
Date Issued
2013
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
Technological improvements over the past decade have led to the widespread use of autonomous surface and underwater vehicles for data collection in marine environmental sensing and modeling in coastal environments. However, these vehicles and their sensors still have limitations, especially when tasked with observing highly dynamic or transient processes. We investigate the application of a small unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to the study of two such phenomena: Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs) and thermal plumes. A complete field-operable system was developed to identify and characterize HAB events through a human-monitored supervisory control system. This capability was extended with an infrared imaging camera for remote sensing of thermal plumes, enabling future work to augment the in-situ measurements of surface craft with thermal imagery from a UAV. Experiments in Singapore have led to the successful identification and subsequent study of algal blooms on multiple occasions and demonstrated the potential for observation and modeling of thermal plumes.
Description
Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, 2013.
This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 68-70).
Subjects
Mechanical Engineering.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering
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