Characterising the performance of a drone-mounted real-time methane imaging system

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MacGruer, Angus G. and Johnson, Steven D. and Mekhail, Simon P. and Nutt, Kyle J. and Padgett, Miles J. and Gibson, Graham M. (2025) Characterising the performance of a drone-mounted real-time methane imaging system. Scientific Reports, 15 (1). 8787. ISSN 2045-2322 (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-93186-z)

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Abstract

We demonstrate a methane gas imaging system mounted to an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that is shown to perform real-time detection at distances up to 10m whist airborne. Laser diodes that switch between on- and off- resonance with a 1.6μm methane absorption line are used to flood-illuminate a scene. The scene is imaged with an infrared InGaAs camera and the differential of the on-resonance and off-resonance back-scatter images are used to reveal the gas distribution. The performance of the system was characterised against a range of back-scatter surfaces, showing promising applicability to realistic gas sensing environments. We demonstrate that the system is capable of detecting a gas concentration of 5000 ppm.metre up to a range of 13.6m.

ORCID iDs

MacGruer, Angus G., Johnson, Steven D. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6181-8303, Mekhail, Simon P., Nutt, Kyle J., Padgett, Miles J. and Gibson, Graham M.;
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)