UAV Technology for Source Recovery and Emergency Response

An optimized algorithm for allowing the autonomous search of a radioactive source has
been designed and implemented as a firmware on an UAV. The algorithm has been
designed to comply with several constraints imposed by UAV and by the radiation sensor,
in terms of electrical autonomy and time duration of the measurement process. The
algorithm implements a gradient descent strategy which allows to recover, with a good
spatial resolution, the radiation source whose position and type (i.e., activity) is not a priori
known. The algorithm was validated through a Monte Carlo simulation and incorporates
problem’s constraints regarding the search area. Simulation results show that the UAV is
able to appropriately locate the source location with high success rate during a single UAV
mission and to estimate the total time of the operation