Baca, Tomas (Czech Technical University in Prague), Stibinger, Petr (Czech Technical University in Prague), Doubravova, Daniela (Advacam, s.r.o.), Turecek, Daniel (Advacam, s.r.o.), Solc, Jaroslav (Czech Metrology Institute), Rusnak, Jan (Czech Technical University in Prague), Saska, Martin (Czech Technical University in Prague), Jakubek, Jan (Advacam, s.r.o.)

Gamma Radiation Source Localization for Micro Aerial Vehicles with a Miniature Single-Detector Compton Event Camera

Scheduled for presentation during the Regular Session "Sensor Fusion II" (WeB4), Wednesday, June 16, 2021, 14:00−14:20, Naoussa

2021 International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS), June 15-18, 2021, Athens, Greece

This information is tentative and subject to change. Compiled on April 20, 2024

Abstract

A novel method for localization and estimation of compact sources of gamma radiation for Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) is presented in this paper. The method is developed for a novel single-detector Compton camera, developed by the authors. The detector is extremely small and weighs only 40 g, which opens the possibility for use on the widely accepted sub-1 kg class of drones. The Compton camera uses the MiniPIX TPX3 CdTe event camera to measure Compton scattering products of incoming high-energy gamma photons. The 3D position and the sub-nanosecond time delay of the measured scattering products are used to reconstruct sets of possible directions to the source. The proposed method utilizes a filter for fusing the measurements and estimating the radiation source position during the flight. The computations are executed in real-time onboard and allow integration of the detector info into a fully-autonomous system. Moreover, the real-time nature of the estimator potentially allows estimating states of a moving radiation source. The proposed method was validated in simulations and demonstrated in a real-world experiment with a Cs137 radiation source. The approach can localize a gamma source without estimating the gradient or contours of radiation intensity, which opens possibilities for localizing sources in a cluttered and urban environment.