Improvement of technological equipment drone for water sampling: Design and modeling

Abstract

One of the modern problems in the field of ecology is the creation of environmentally friendly equipment for monitoring the state of various reservoirs by taking water for further laboratory analysis. Water quality monitoring is needed to record changes in water quality over time, as well as to detect contamination from storm water runoff, which may contain microorganisms, minerals, debris, and fuel residues. One of the promising ways to solve this problem is using drones to collect hydro-chemical data on the spot and take water samples from freshwater environments. This approach makes it possible to perform the aspects of biological and physical-chemical water sampling that are necessary for implementing large-scale water sampling programs and makes these programs more efficient, safe, and economically profitable. However, in modern times, the use of drones for water quality monitoring is held back by a number of important limitations, namely the low level of objective sampling and the relatively small volume of water samples. The article proposes a fundamentally new design of the technological equipment of a drone for taking water samples, namely a new design of a bathometer - a device for taking water samples and installing them on the Cardan suspension. These structural differences ensure the orientation of the bathometer only under the influence of gravitational force, which in turn significantly increases the objectivity of water sampling. The article also provides kinematic and dynamic models of the bathometer's movement on the Cardan suspension rings. It presents the modeling results in the form of graphical and analytical dependencies of kinematic analysis, which constitutes the scientific aspect of the problem. The main motivation of the conducted research is the creation of environmentally friendly equipment in the form of an unmanned aerial vehicle, which is designed to increase the objectivity of water sampling.

Keywords

• drone platforms
• quadcopter
• water sampling devices
• water monitoring
• bathometers