Design and Experimental Validation of 'Petal': A New Quadcopter Flight Pattern to Remain at the Outer Border of a Smoke Plume

Measuring air quality is an important environmental challenge, and a growing number of drones are now equipped with pollution sensors to detect airborne pollutants. This paper presents a trajectory tracking strategy that allows the drone to fly along the border of a fire smoke plume, preventing it from entering the plume where gas concentrations are high. Algorithms developed in Python were tested in simulation with virtual plumes based on emulated GPS data, then validated experimentally in the field and during a real fire using an onboard particle sensor embedded on a quadcopter.