RADRON: Cooperative Localization of Ionizing Radiation Sources by MAVs with Compton Cameras

This work has been submitted to the IEEE for possible publication. Abstract-- We present a novel approach to localizing radioactive material by cooperating Micro Aerial V ehicles (MA Vs). The detector's exceptionally low weight (40 g) opens up new possibilities of radiation detection by a team of cooperating agile MA Vs. We propose a new fundamental concept of fusing the Compton camera measurements to estimate the position of the radiation source in real time even from extremely sparse measurements. The data readout and processing are performed directly onboard and the results are used in a dynamic feedback to drive the motion of the vehicles. The MA Vs are stabilized in a tightly cooperating swarm to maximize the information gained by the Compton cameras, rapidly locate the radiation source, and even track a moving radiation source. I. INTRODUCTION Nuclear environments represent a domain particularly well suited for the deployment of mobile robots [1]-[3]. The primary driving force is to reduce human exposure to harmful radiation, and to facilitate access to areas that are difficult to reach by conventional means.