X-Drone

Introduction

Large industrial installations requiring large warehouses for storage of materials such as steel, wood, building materials, or landfill and recycling industries, involve the possibility of including unwanted nuclear contaminants, and therefore the need for a monitoring technique secure for the operators involved.
The same concept applies to the case of highly contaminated industrial sites and areas where incidents have occurred involving radiological or nuclear material.

Project goal

The goal of the project is the realization of a prototype unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) for the location of radiation sources in industrial plants or in general in areas contaminated as a result of an accident involving nuclear materials. The radiation sources are localized and identified by equipping the UAV with haptic teleoperation and a CZT detector of X-rays and gamma-rays, which is lightweight, compact, spectroscopic and with low power consumption.

X-drone in action

XDRONE technology demonstrated in relevant environment: localization and identification of an Iridium nuclear source (in collaboration with "ARPA Emilia Romagna" and "EMILTEST cnd")

 

System prototype demonstration in operational environment: searching for nuclear sources in a waste disposal (in collaboration with "s.a.ba.r. spa" and "ARPA Emilia Romagna")

 

X-drone version 2

Being the project one of the most successful of the "Progetto Bandiera - La fabbrica del futuro" ("Flagship Project - Future Factory") program, an extension for this project was funded to optimize the prototype. The last version of the prototype was equipped with a quasi-emispheric detector and UAV upgrades to fullfill the constantly evolving legilation.