TY - JOUR A1 - Neumann, Patrick P. A1 - Kohlhoff, Harald A1 - Hüllmann, Dino A1 - Krentel, Daniel A1 - Kluge, Martin A1 - Dzierliński, M. A1 - Lilienthal, A. J. A1 - Bartholmai, Matthias T1 - Aerial-based gas tomography – from single beams to complex gas distributions N2 - In this paper, we present and validate the concept of an autonomous aerial robot to reconstruct tomographic 2D slices of gas plumes in outdoor environments. Our platform, the so-called Unmanned Aerial Vehicle for Remote Gas Sensing (UAV-REGAS), combines a lightweight Tunable Diode Laser Absorption Spectroscopy (TDLAS) gas sensor with a 3-axis aerial stabilization gimbal for aiming at a versatile octocopter. While the TDLAS sensor provides integral gas concentration measurements, it does not measure the distance traveled by the laser diode’s beam nor the distribution of gas along the optical path. Thus, we complement the set-up with a laser rangefinder and apply principles of Computed Tomography (CT) to create a model of the spatial gas distribution from a set of integral concentration measurements. To allow for a fundamental ground truth evaluation of the applied gas tomography algorithm, we set up a unique outdoor test environment based on two 3D ultrasonic anemometers and a distributed array of 10 infrared gas transmitters. We present results showing its performance characteristics and 2D plume reconstruction capabilities under realistic conditions. The proposed system can be deployed in scenarios that cannot be addressed by currently available robots and thus constitutes a significant step forward for the field of Mobile Robot Olfaction (MRO). KW - Aerial robot olfaction KW - Mobile robot olfaction KW - Gas tomography KW - TDLAS KW - Plume PY - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-487843 SP - 1 EP - 16 PB - Taylor & Francis CY - London AN - OPUS4-48784 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -