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Magnetic sensing has applications in diverse technological domains including geology and geophysics, structural inspection, geospatial navigation, and vehicle detection and avoidance. At-range detection of large assets such as vehicles, specifically, can be executed using UAV-deployed magnetometers to safely determine the presence or identity of vehicles even if they are visually obscured. However, several challenges must be overcome and, in particular, the electromagnetic noise generated by the aircraft motors and other onboard electronics sets the signal-to-noise ratio and thereby limits the effective range of such an application.
Here, we present UAV integration with a compact optically pumped magnetometer (QuSpin QTFM) and characterize its performance in vehicle sensing from the drone platform. We first characterize magnetic noise produced by the drone rotors to understand the detection limits it imposes on SNR. We then demonstrate vehicle detection at standoff distances of 5 and 10m. We utilize a volumetric magnetic field background subtraction method in order to enhance vehicle detection, and we characterize the impact of UAV velocity on field detection.
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