Networked drones for concrete structure, environmental, and radiation surveys

在过去的十年里，无人机(UAV)的发展取得了巨大的进步，无人机也被称为无人机。虽然第一批产品是针对消费者的，但针对工业用例(例如，检查、监控和监视)的解决方案是下一个前沿。首先，市场上SenseFly和英特尔等公司的解决方案前景看好，但需要有经验的飞行员来驾驶无人机。飞行员负责高水平的无人机任务规划和在杂乱环境中的导航，而目前可用的一些无人机配备了距离传感器，以支持人类并自动避免与基础设施发生局部碰撞。这项提议的主要目标是开发一种针对工业现场的全自动化无人机监控解决方案。定位传感器的组合将集成到车辆中，以实现室内和室外的高精度定位。为了有效地监控大型工业现场，我们提出了一种多无人机策略。地面站协调和优化多架无人机的飞行路线，并确保它们在电池电量不足或出现任何其他技术问题时安全返回基站。此外，多伦多大学(UofT)在混凝土完整性和老化评估方面拥有丰富的知识。为了将这些知识转化为基于无人机的解决方案，研究了一种轻型传感器套件，并在概念验证实验中进行了演示，目的是实现自动化的远程混凝土健康评估。安大略省发电公司(OPG)是该项目的重要合作伙伴，将根据无人机监测解决方案的要求提供直接投入。

In the past decade, there has been tremendous progress in the development of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), also called drones. While first products were targeted at consumers, solutions for industrial use cases (for example, inspection, monitoring, and surveillance) are the next frontier. First solutions on the market from companies such as SenseFly and Intel are promising but require an experienced pilot to navigate the UAV. The pilot is responsible for the high-level UAV mission planning and navigation in cluttered environments, while some of the currently available drones are equipped with distance sensors to support the human and automatically avoid local collisions with the infrastructure. The main goal of this proposal is to develop a fully-automated UAV monitoring solution for industrial sites. A combination of localization sensors will be integrated into the vehicle to localize the vehicle with high accuracy both indoors and outdoors. To monitor large industrial sites efficiently, we propose a multi-UAV strategy. A ground station coordinates and optimizes the flight paths of multiple drones and makes sure that they return back to the base station safely when they run low on battery or have any other technical problem. Furthermore, the University of Toronto (UofT) has deep knowledge in concrete integrity and aging assessment. In order for this knowledge to translate to a UAV-based solution, a lightweight sensor suite is researched and demonstrated in proof-of-concept experiments with the goal of achieving automated, remote concrete health assessment. Ontario Power Generation (OPG) is an important partner on this project and will provide direct input in terms of the requirements for a UAV-based monitoring solution.