Multi-Species Environmental Gas Sensing using Drone-Based Fourier-Transform Infrared Spectroscopy

Atmospheric gas sensing using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is growing in importance because of the wide range of applications this technology can flexibly address, such as climate monitoring [1], pollution detection [2], volcanology [3], and hazardous scene assessment [4]. The benefits over conventional approaches are striking: drones can be deployed quickly at low cost and without the need for dedicated runways, can operate in contaminated or hazardous environments, and can perform systematic high-resolution surveys in three-dimensional space with a high repeatability. Here we report the first intrinsically multi-species gas sensing using a UAV-integrated Fourier-transform spectrometer with long-wavelength infrared spectral coverage extending deep into the molecular fingerprint region.