Mission Planning for Low Altitude Aerial Drones during Water Sampling

Mission planning for small uncrewed aerial systems (sUAS) as a platform for remote sensors goes beyond the traditional issues of selecting a sensor, flying altitude/speed, spatial resolution, and the date/time of operation. Unlike purchasing or contracting imagery collections from traditional satellite or manned airborne systems, the sUAS operator must carefully select launching, landing, and flight paths that meet both the needs of the remote sensing collection and the regulatory requirements of federal, state, and local regulations. Mission planning for aerial drones must consider temporal and geographic changes in the environment, such as local weather conditions or changing tidal height. One key aspect of aerial drone missions is the visibility of the aircraft and communication with the aircraft. In this research, a visibility model for low-altitude aerial drone operations was designed using a GIS-based framework supported by high spatial resolution LiDAR data. In the example study, the geographic positions of the visibility of an aerial drone used for water sampling at low altitudes (e.g., 2 m above ground level) were modeled at different levels of tidal height. Using geospatial data for a test-case environment at the Winyah Bay estuarine environment in South Carolina, we demonstrate the utility, challenges, and solutions for determining the visibility of a very low-altitude aerial drone used in water sampling.