A Drone-Based Multisensory Payload for Maritime Pollutants Detections

Surface floating marine pollution is responsible for a wide range of environmental hazards for marine fauna. Surface sea pollution monitoring is usually carried out by visual inspection from aircrafts or ships. However, human inspection is costly and results can vary from observer to observer. Remote sensing technology is a valid alternative to in situ measurements that can reduce costs and risks compared to in situ missions. In this context, aerial platforms provide a convenient tradeoff between coverage and resolution, both spatial and temporal, compared to ship or satellite based surveys. As well, small, unmanned aircrafts have the potential to be very inexpensive to operate, offer more flexibility of operation, and will benefit from active research on reducing size, weight, and power (SWAP) requirements of various sensors. However, the use of a multisensory system on board a commercial small drone is hard to implement considering that it is desirable to make a system reliable and robust. This article shows the main results of POSEIDON Project. Within this project, a commercial drone has been equipped with a radar system and a multispectral camera jointly observing a common area of interest. Flights have been performed in Spain in February 2021 and the main achievements are reported in this article.