Unmanned Helicopter Airborne Fourier Transform Infrared Spectrometer Remote Sensing System for Hazardous Vapors Detection

Abstract

The rapid development of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) provides a new application mode for gas remote sensing. Compared with fixed observation and vehicle-mounted platforms, a Fourier transform infrared spectrometer (FTIR) integrated in the UAV can monitor chemical gases across a large area, can collect data from multiple angles in three-dimensional space, and can operate in contaminated or hazardous environments. The unmanned helicopter has a larger payload and longer endurance than the rotary-wing drone, which relaxes the weight, size and power consumption limitations of the spectrometer. A FTIR remote sensing system integrated in an unmanned helicopter was developed. In order to solve the data acquisition and analysis problem caused by vibration and attitude instability of the unmanned helicopter, a dual-channel parallel oscillating mirror was designed to improve the stability of the interferometer module, and a robust principal component analysis algorithm based on kernel function was used to separate background spectrum and gas features. The flight experiment of sulfur hexafluoride gas detection was carried out. The results show that the system operates stably and can collect and identify the target spectrum in real time under the motion and hovering modes of an unmanned helicopter, which has broad application prospects.