Design and Development of a multi rotor UAV for Oil Spill Mitigation

Over the last few years, oil spill incidents occured with some regularity during exploration, production and transportation, causing a large economic and ecologic impact in the world community. To minimise these impacts and reduce the time response of the initial mitigation process, autonomous vehicles, such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) can be used to perform oil spill monitoring and mitigation. This paper presents the design and implementation of a multirotor UAV capable of identifying and combat the oil spill, by using a release system of consortia with bacteria and nutrients. Several field tests occurred in Portugal and Spain, where the oil spill was implemented in a simulated environment, resulting in a cooperative and simultaneous manoeuvre between the vehicles.