Development of an Aerial Drone System for Water Analysis and Sampling

Water sensing and sampling is a complex application that can benefit from the use of aerial drones. In the monitoring of an aquatic environment, inspection of its physical, chemical, and biological states are equally important. In most cases, only the physical and chemical properties are investigated due to lack of portable sensor packages capable of in situ measurements of biological indicators. Additionally, biological sample collection for ex situ analysis poses certain challenges which requires specialized sample collection methods. For acquiring a good sample, remote sensing needs to work hand in hand with the sampling mechanism to capture the correct analyte of interest. This work presents the design and development of an aerial drone equipped with a custom-made sensor package and sampling mechanism, for sensing and non-destructive sampling of dissolved organic matter in aquatic environments. The developed system is experimentally validated in an outdoor setting and is shown to be capable for in situ measurements of fluorescent content of water bodies and sensor-triggered sample collection.