Autonomous Flying Robot for the Seismic Exploration

Robotic systems for seismic sensor deployment can potentially lead to achieving cost-effectiveness with optimal performance through better survey execution accuracy, shorter turnaround time, and global information management. Among the available robotic platforms, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or flying robots offer unique platform with a wide range of integrated capabilities, including propulsion, positioning, sensing, remote or self-control, as well as swarm operations. This paper presents a solution that turns individual UAV into Autonomous Seismic Acquisition Device (ASAD). The ASAD consists of a quadrotor equipped with a sensor set underneath for seismic data acquisition. The sensor set includes three orthogonal geophones and a 3-component accelerometer. Thus, the ASAD can fly to the target position, land, couple the sensor to the ground after landing, and record the seismic signal in accordance with the flight mission. As a result of a field test of this system, seismic common-shot gathers were recorded. The gathers acquired by the accelerometer and geophone sensors mounted on the ASAD showed results comparable to those with the traditional wired seismic data acquisition system.