[S-TT37] Airborne surveys and monitoring of the Earth

[STT37-04] Drone-borne electromagnetic prospecting system for detection of buried metal objects and soil resistivity mapping

*Yuji Mitsuhata¹, Takumi Ueda², Akiya Kamimura¹, Shin Kato¹, Atsushi Takeuchi¹, Chikara Aduma¹, Tishiyuki Yokota¹ (1.National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, 2.Waseda University)

Keywords:electromagnetic prospecting, drone, resistivity, soil, metal objects

Our drone-borne electromagnetic (EM) survey system consists of a commercial multi-frequency electromagnetic sensor equipped with a GPS receiver, a WiFi serial transceiver, and an ultrasonic distance sensor to measure the height of the EM sensor above the ground surface. The EM sensor is suspended from a drone with ropes. The system has been tested at two experimental sites. The first site consisted of two buried vehicles to simulate a landslide. The second site consisted of wet and dry agricultural fields to test resistivity mapping. In the first test, we used the in-phase component of the measured data to locate the vehicles. The shallower vehicle was identified clearly, while the deeper vehicle was located successfully, albeit less easily. In the second test, the quadrature component was used for one-dimensional inversion. The results showed that the resistivity distributions could be mapped at some depths by using a five-frequency-processed quadrature component, and clearly showed the difference between the wet and dry fields. These results demonstrated the potential of the survey system to search for buried metal objects and for shallow subsurface resistivity mapping over relatively large areas.