UNMANNED AIRBORNE SYSTEM IN REAL-TIME RADIOLOGICAL MONITORING

The unmanned airborne vehicle (UAV) platform, equipped with an appropriate payload and capable of carrying a variety of modular sensors, is an effective tool for real-tinic control of environmental disasters of different types (e.g. nuclear or chemical accidents). It can be remotely piloted. day and night and under most types of weather conditions. into or close to the disaster area, preventing unnecessary injury to the crew, or loss of manned aircraft. The suggested payloads consist of a miniaturised self-collimating nuclear spectrometry sensor and electro-optical sensors for day and night imagery. The system provides means of both real-time field data acquisition in an endangered environment and on-line hazard assessment computation from the down link raw data. All the processing. including flight planning using an expert system. is performed by a dedicated microcomputer located in a Mobile Ground Control Station (MGCS) situated outside the hazardous area. The UAV equipment is part of a system designed especially for the critically important early phase of emergency response. Decisions by the Emergency Response Manager (ERM) are also based on the ability to estimate the potential dose to individuals and the mitigation of dose when protection measures are implemented.