This thesis is an upgrade of a group project that started as a part of SMARTSEA postgraduate program. The thesis deals with the detection techniques of oil spills, and optimization of the route of an aerial drone while flying over a port.
In the introduction, we present the issues of the oil spills - how they occur, what the consequences for people and for the environment are, and the techniques of cleaning up the oil spills. We realized that the dangers are much greater than an average person would imagine, so we strived to find a way to combat dangerous consequences of the oil spills.
We decided from the very beginning, that we would use an aerial drone for the sea scanning, as this was our only available option at that moment, but we also wanted to learn more about other techniques and methods of oil spill detection. In the second chapter of this thesis, we deal with different detection techniques, from the use of a simple camera to radar systems and artificial satellites. We realized that the technology needed for these techniques can get quite expensive, as the instruments must be very precise to detect a thin layer of oil on the water surface.
We decided to fight oil spills with computers and an “amateur” drone. In the experimental part of this thesis, we dealt with the route optimization and the optimization of energy consumption. Our goal was to do as much work as possible with minimum electric consumption, because we were limited by insufficiently powerful drone batteries.
The results of this thesis are: better understanding of oil spills and problems that come with them, better knowledge of oil spill detection techniques, better understanding of route optimization for an aerial drone and different approaches to calculating the shortest routes, and understanding of different flight settings on battery consumption of the aerial drone.
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