Mobile In-Situ Sensor Platforms in Environmental Research and Monitoring

The use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and Autonomous Underwater Vehicles as mobile sensor platforms in environmental science is growing. While the vehicles and sensor technology have reached maturity for practical operation, we observe that the potential of artificial intelligence allowing these devices to perform their tasks autonomously is not utilized. We give an overview of current applications of such mobile sensor platforms in the domains oceanography, meteorology and atmospheric dispersion and discuss the approaches for intelligent adaptive sensor movement proposed in research and applied in practice.