Smelling Nano Aerial Vehicle for Gas Source Localization and Mapping

This paper describes the development and validation of the currently smallest aerial platform with olfaction capabilities. The developed Smelling Nano Aerial Vehicle (SNAV) is based on a lightweight commercial nano-quadcopter (27 g) equipped with a custom gas sensing board that can host up to two in situ metal oxide semiconductor (MOX) gas sensors. Due to its small form-factor, the SNAV is not a hazard for humans, enabling its use in public areas or inside buildings. It can autonomously carry out gas sensing missions of hazardous environments inaccessible to terrestrial robots and bigger drones, for example searching for victims and hazardous gas leaks inside pockets that form within the wreckage of collapsed buildings in the aftermath of an earthquake or explosion. The first contribution of this work is assessing the impact of the nano-propellers on the MOX sensor signals at different distances to a gas source. A second contribution is adapting the 'bout' detection algorithm, proposed by Schmuker et al. (2016) to extract specific features from the derivative of the MOX sensor response, for real-time operation. The third and main contribution is the experimental validation of the SNAV for gas source localization (GSL) and mapping in a large indoor environment (160 m²) with a gas source placed in challenging positions for the drone, for example hidden in the ceiling of the room or inside a power outlet box. Two GSL strategies are compared, one based on the instantaneous gas sensor response and the other one based on the bout frequency. From the measurements collected (in motion) along a predefined sweeping path we built (in less than 3 min) a 3D map of the gas distribution and identified the most likely source location. Using the bout frequency yielded on average a higher localization accuracy than using the instantaneous gas sensor response (1.38 m versus 2.05 m error), however accurate tuning of an additional parameter (the noise threshold) is required in the former case. The main conclusion of this paper is that a nano-drone has the potential to perform gas sensing tasks in complex environments

Leakage Testing Handbook

Leakage testing handbook giving fundamentals, theory, methods, detector equipment, and test medi

High Altitude Aerial Natural Gas Leak Detection System

The objective of this program was to develop and demonstrate a cost-effective and power-efficient advanced standoff sensing technology able to detect and quantify, from a high-altitude (> 10,000 ft) aircraft, natural gas leaking from a high-pressure pipeline. The advanced technology is based on an enhanced version of the Remote Methane Leak Detector (RMLD) platform developed previously by Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI). The RMLD combines a telecommunications-style diode laser, fiber-optic components, and low-cost DSP electronics with the well-understood principles of Wavelength Modulation Spectroscopy (WMS), to indicate the presence of natural gas located between the operator and a topographic target. The transceiver transmits a laser beam onto a topographic target and receives some of the laser light reflected by the target. The controller processes the received light signal to deduce the amount of methane in the laser's path. For use in the airborne platform, we modified three aspects of the RMLD, by: (1) inserting an Erbium-doped optical fiber laser amplifier to increase the transmitted laser power from 10 mW to 5W; (2) increasing the optical receiver diameter from 10 cm to 25 cm; and (3) altering the laser wavelength from 1653 nm to 1618 nm. The modified RMLD system provides a path-integrated methane concentration sensitivity {approx}5000 ppm-m, sufficient to detect the presence of a leak from a high capacity transmission line while discriminating against attenuation by ambient methane. In ground-based simulations of the aerial leak detection scenario, we demonstrated the ability to measure methane leaks within the laser beam path when it illuminates a topographic target 2000 m away. We also demonstrated simulated leak detection from ranges of 200 m using the 25 cm optical receiver without the fiber amplifier

Measurement of the parity-violating spin-rotation of polarized neutrons propagating through liquid helium

Thesis (PhD) - Indiana University, Physics, 2008In the forward elastic scattering of transversely polarized neutrons propagating through a medium, the most prominent parity-violating observable is the rotation of the neutron spin vector about its momentum vector, which is due to the nucleon-nucleon (NN) weak interaction. A phenomenological model for the NN weak interaction uses nucleons and mesons as the important degrees of freedom, but values for the nucleon-meson weak coupling amplitudes are not well constrained by measurement or theory. A measurement of the parity-violating spin rotation of cold neutrons passing through liquid helium enables a quantitative theoretical interpretation of the poorly-understood properties of the NN weak interaction. Additionally, parity-violating neutron spin rotation in liquid helium is sensitive to the weak neutral current, which is not well-known from the current nuclear data set. The measurement is conducted by introducing a liquid helium target between a neutron polarizer/analyzer pair and manipulating the target and neutron spin to isolate the parity-violating rotation in the presence of much larger parity-conserving rotations due to residual magnetic fields. A previous measurement was performed in 1996 at the NIST Center for Neutron Research in Gaithersburg, Maryland with the result (8.0 +\- 14[stat] +\- 2.2[syst] ) x 10^-7 rad/m We describe a redesigned apparatus that can use superfluid helium to increase statistics and the installation of additional magnetic shielding to reduce systematics in an effort to reach a sensitivity goal of 3 x 10^-7 rad/m at NIST with an upper bound of 1 x 10^-7 rad/m on systematic effects. We describe the apparatus, the design of the new liquid helium target, and show preliminary data from this ongoing experiment

On the sources of astrometric anomalous refraction

Over a century ago, astronomers using transit telescopes to determine precise stellar positions were hampered by an unexplained periodic shifting of the stars they were observing. With the advent of CCD transit telescopes in the past three decades, this unexplained motion, now known as anomalous refraction, is again being observed. Anomalous refraction is described as a low frequency, large angular scale motion of the entire image plane with respect to the celestial coordinate system as observed and defined by previous astrometric catalogs. These motions of typically several tenths of an arcsecond with timescales on the order of ten minutes are ubiquitous to drift-scan groundbased astrometric measurements regardless of location or telescopes used and have been attributed to the effect of tilting of equal-density layers of the atmosphere. The cause of this tilting has often been attributed to atmospheric gravity waves, but never confirmed. Although theoretical models of atmospheric refraction show that atmospheric gravity waves are a plausible cause of anomalous refraction, an observational campaign specifically directed at defining this relationship provides clear evidence that anomalous refraction is not consistent with the passage of atmospheric gravity waves. The source of anomalous refraction is found to be meter scale slowly evolving coherent dynamical structures in the boundary-layer below 60 meters

Innovation: Key to the future

The NASA Marshall Space Flight Center Annual Report is presented. A description of research and development projects is included. Topics covered include: space science; space systems; transportation systems; astronomy and astrophysics; earth sciences; solar terrestrial physics; microgravity science; diagnostic and inspection system; information, electronic, and optical systems; materials and manufacturing; propulsion; and structures and dynamics