Gamma Radiation Source Localization for Micro Aerial Vehicles with a Miniature Single-Detector Compton Event Camera
Tomas Baca, Petr Stibinger, Daniela Doubravova, Daniel Turecek,, Jaroslav Solc, Jan Rusnak, Martin Saska, Jan Jakubek

TL;DR
This paper introduces a real-time, onboard gamma source localization method for micro aerial vehicles using a novel miniature Compton camera, enabling autonomous detection and tracking of radiation sources in complex environments.
Contribution
The paper presents a new miniaturized single-detector Compton camera and a real-time fusion algorithm for MAV-based gamma source localization, suitable for sub-1 kg drones.
Findings
Successfully localized gamma sources in simulations.
Demonstrated real-world localization with Cs137 source.
Operates in cluttered urban environments without gradient estimation.
Abstract
A novel method for localization and estimation of compact sources of gamma radiation for Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) is presented in this paper. The method is developed for a novel single-detector Compton camera, developed by the authors. The detector is extremely small and weighs only 40 g, which opens the possibility for use on sub-1 kg class of drones. The Compton camera uses the MiniPIX TPX3 CdTe event camera to measure Compton scattering products of incoming high-energy gamma photons. The 3D position and the sub-nanosecond time delay of the measured scattering products are used to reconstruct sets of possible directions to the source. The proposed method utilizes a filter for fusing the measurements and estimating the radiation source position during the flight. The computations are executed in real-time onboard and allow integration of the detector info into a fully-autonomous…
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