Feasibility of using unmanned aerial systems for environmental monitoring of the marine environment

This thesis is the culmination of work carried out on a number of different UAS, in order to determine the feasibility of using UAS to deliver sensor payloads to the marine environment. A number of experiments involving said UAS were conducted, and future work detailed. Chapter 2 provides a brief overview of literature in acoustics and UAS, including UAS use around marine mammals. Chapter 3 looks into the noise produced by a gimbal, which relates the noise levels seen to literature and determines if the acoustic signal emitted could interfere with wildlife. Chapter 4 delves into the acoustics generated by the motors and propellers, with a comparison of these results with published literature. Chapter 5 shows the work conducted and implemented on a custom data logging system with in-house designed underwater housing, for use on a Splashdrone UAS, which is used in Chapter 6 for an acoustic survey of the marine environment. Chapter 7 uses on-board accelerometers inside of a flight controller to monitor displacement experienced, for use in monitoring surface heave of a water body. Chapter 8 concludes this thesis with a review on key findings, and a summary of future work that is to be conducted. Overall, this thesis determines that it is feasible to deliver sensor payloads to marine environments to an extent; a number of issues remain, which are detailed throughout this thesis.