MOSA (Mission-Oriented Sensor Arrays): uma nova abordagem para o sensoriamento remoto embarcado em VANT’s

Abstract

The use of Unmanned Autonomous Vehicles (UAV’s) is progressively shifting from military missions to civilian applications and becoming a viable alternative for remote sensing and automated thematic mapping. This work presents the concept of Mission-Oriented Sensor Arrays, or MOSA. A MOSA system is composed of a set of sensors and computing devices that are integrated and embedded into an UAV to perform specific missions autonomously, among them, mapping missions. The main objective of a MOSA system is the on-board processing of sensory data, producing real-time, ready-to-use information. MOSA also allows the reduction of information traffic on the often limited communication channel between the aircraft and the ground station. Within the MOSA concept, the aircraft is structured as such: mission control (MOSA) and flight control (autopilot). This increases the robustness of the whole system, since it is only necessary to exchange the MOSA to adapt the UAV to a new mission. In this paper we present a reference architecture and a development methodology for MOSA systems. The specification of a MOSA system applied to the mapping of ground-based sound sources is also presented to illustrate the proposed approach. The modeled MOSA is based on the integration of data from a thermal imaging sensor and a tridimensional sensor for the localization of sound sources. The positional information provided by the applied sensors are integrated into a single cartographic base. This article aims the presentation of MOSA systems concept, including architecture, design methodology, and a reference application model for the automatic mapping of sound sources