Unmanned air systems for effective earth science and environmental surveillance

Published: 1 January 2018

Printed circuit on paper aeroplane — MAVIS sensorcraft: printed circuitry turns paper aeroplane into environmental monitoring platform

Summary: Our research is making unmanned air vehicles more cost-efficient and effective in observing the physical parameters of the environment, from urban areas to the Arctic.

Status: Ongoing

Key staff: Dr András Sóbester , Professor James P Scanlan , Dr Mario Ferraro , Dr Mehmet Ali Erbil , Mr Andrew Lock

Photo of Professor Tim Daffron, Chief Scientific Advisor, BIS

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The challenge

A common feature of effective Earth science, disaster response and eco-system management is a reliance on accurate and up-to-date observational environmental data.

This requirement stretches across massive spatial scales, from cities to the Arctic, and from the sea floor to the stratosphere. It also covers a wide spectrum of physical variables that need observing, such as temperature, pressure, aerosol concentration, ocean salinity and imagery.

This data is needed at high resolution, across large spaces, at low cost, promptly and without making a significant environmental impact. These competing needs usually result in a solution which improves one or two at the expense of the others. Our challenge is to design systems to meet all these needs without compromise.

What we did

There is an increasingly broad range of general purpose unmanned air vehicles, but challenging environmental surveillance missions often require entirely new, bespoke design concepts and new concepts of unmanned air systems operations.

University of Southampton researchers from the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics have taken a fresh, systems level look at how best to employ new manufacturing techniques and innovative observational tools to develop the next generation of unmanned environmental surveillance systems.

Our impact

Supported by the EPSRC and NERC, as well as industry, we have developed and tested three novel autonomous air systems concepts.

Project MAVIS (Massive Atmopsheric Volume Instrumentation System) resulted in a family of biodegradable paper sensorcraft for large scale atmospheric mapping. These paper aeroplanes weigh a few grams and are equipped with sensors and miniature radios which transmits readings to a base station as they descend through the observed block of airspace. We used conductive inkjet printing (CIP), a key technology allowing our team to print electronics directly onto the surface of each aeroplane.