Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, 2013. / This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 68-70). / Technological improvements over the past decade have led to the widespread use of autonomous surface and underwater vehicles for data collection in marine environmental sensing and modeling in coastal environments. However, these vehicles and their sensors still have limitations, especially when tasked with observing highly dynamic or transient processes. We investigate the application of a small unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to the study of two such phenomena: Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs) and thermal plumes. A complete field-operable system was developed to identify and characterize HAB events through a human-monitored supervisory control system. This capability was extended with an infrared imaging camera for remote sensing of thermal plumes, enabling future work to augment the in-situ measurements of surface craft with thermal imagery from a UAV. Experiments in Singapore have led to the successful identification and subsequent study of algal blooms on multiple occasions and demonstrated the potential for observation and modeling of thermal plumes. / by Joshua Leighton. / S.M.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:MIT/oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/79161 |
| Date | January 2013 |
| Creators | Leighton, Joshua (Joshua C.) |
| Contributors | Franz S. Hover and Nicholas M. Patrikalakis., Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering., Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering. |
| Publisher | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Source Sets | M.I.T. Theses and Dissertation |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 70 p., application/pdf |
| Rights | M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission., http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582 |
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