Interoperable Small UAS Platforms to Support Environmental Monitoring

Aerial platform usage for environmental monitoring can benefit several target domains: air quality and agriculture health monitoring, illegal dumping detection, wildfire management, safeguarding. Currently a wide variety of aerospace platforms (satellites, aircraft, helicopters, unmanned aerial systems,...) are available, but their real effectiveness is often limited due to the capability of the on- board sensors. CIRA experience in using Small UAS Platforms in environmental applications has confirmed that no single aerial platform can provide both broad coverage and low altitude high resolution measurements. In order to match these constraints an integrated multi-vehicle system is needed exhibiting: - Robust obstacle avoidance - High capability to easily track the target -Low altitude capability A fleet of a Small Unmanned Airship and multi rotor UASs as information acquisition platforms seems to match these requirements. The complexity is shifted: the individual platform are simple, the whole system is complex. This new prospective, joined with the small size of the UAS platforms, arise challenging aspects tackling problems related to the low autonomy and lower operating range, the distribution of payloads, the integration and interoperation, fault tolerant and robust design. The paper will present considerations about experimenting such systems on a real case scenario