A Compact Drone based Multisensory System for Maritime Observation

Sea pollution is growing rapidly and is responsible for environmental hazard for the marine fauna and human health. Monitoring of sea surface pollution is needed to reduce its impact on marine wildlife. Remote sensing technology (e.g. aerial, space and maritime technology) represents a powerful means to cope with this issue. It is a valid alternative to in situ measurements that can reduce costs and risks compared to in situ missions. Among all possible aerial platforms, drones offer a great flexibility and the technological advances in this field is making drones even more appealing for this kind of applications and research progresses rapidly. However the use of a multisensory system on board of a commercial small drone is hard to be implemented also considering that it is desirable to make a system reliable and robust. This paper shows the main results of POSEIDON project. Specifically, an experiment in which a commercial drone has been equipped with a radar system and a multispectral camera jointly operating observing a common area of interest. Preliminary results are shown in this paper that demonstrate the system capability.