MOBILE TETHERED UNMANNED AERIAL VEHICLE (UAS) FOR CONSTANT AIR QUALITY MONITORING

Since the drone industry is more and more frequently used on a large scale, it is desired to obtain autonomous drones for the fulfillment of as many different missions as possible. Thus, within this project it presented the design of a mobile tether system for a rotary-wing UAV, with the aim of detecting changes in air quality, especially in areas around cities where illegal waste burning is frequently reported or in highly industrialized areas. Mobility is one of the important features of the proposed tether system, as it can be transported as permanent equipment for the environmental protection service. Also, the air quality sensors on board can detect air changes over long periods of time when the UAV is anchored to the rolling / unrolling system on the ground or can detect the air quality when the UAV is disconnected from the ground system, over short periods of time, at higher altitudes. In this paper, both the hardware and software component of the tether system were designed and the capabilities of this system were tested through the simulation of a generic reconnaissance mission and a dynamic mission, both under the laboratory conditions.