Design of a particulate matter measurement system using an unmanned aerial vehicle

Abstract

The World Health Organization considers air pollution as one of the priorities in human health; their studies point out there are risk with the concentration that today are observe in many developed countries. Thus, regulatory entities responsible for the environment surveillance, protection and prevention use air quality index measurement systems in form of permanent stations located in zones of interest, generating high investment cost because of the need of copy instrumentation systems in strategic locations for the data acquisition. Taking into consideration the aforementioned, an alternative solution presents to the proposed problem arranging an unmanned aerial vehicle as a shifting device and introducing an environmental variables measurement system affix to it, considering a peculiar characteristic, a kind of wing Zagi model adjusted to the peculiar and specific needs of its application. For such purpose, a methodology is executed in two phases: a design of a particulate matter measurement system focused in the characterization of the air quality index and instrumentation of an unmanned aerial vehicle with typical specifications of the application competent for the assemble of the measurements systems. As a result, it was achieving the design of the printed circuit for the particulate matter measurement system and developed an unmanned aerial vehicle detailing its building process considering the contours, sizes, lightweight material, technical requirements, autonomy and movement itself to guaranteed the resistance in the air in various conditions and assist the measurement system. This proposal of air quality index measurement will allow the instrumentation of a system to capture and storage data about the measured variables in real time associated with the air quality index.