Toward Accurate Environmental Mapping using Balloon-based UAVs

In this paper, we propose FloatSense, a novel balloon-based UAV network system for efficient and robust air pollution monitoring. Unlike prior related work commonly leveraging rotary-wing drones, FloatSense UAVs mainly exploit helium balloons to maintain elevation and use small lightweight normally-off fans as a propulsion mechanism. The proposed design enables as a result extended environmental sensing missions by staying afloat for weeks. However, the wind-dependent mobility nature of balloon systems involves multiple challenges in terms of system design and pollution mapping. We address in this paper the aforementioned challenges as we design and experimentally evaluate FloatSense in order to identify the benefits of the helium-powered flight mechanism on the accuracy of air pollution mapping compared to traditional rotatory-wing drones. We reveal that although balloon-based UAVs are prone to drifting off due to external forces like wind, FloatSense outperforms traditional drones even in the presence of considerable wind speeds. Moreover, we show that the wind-dependent balloon mobility nature also contributes to the performance improvement of FloatSense in air pollution monitoring missions.