Characterisation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle performance under extreme environmental conditions in a controlled atmospheric facility

The use of drones for environmental monitoring in mountain areas is considered a very effective and innovative method to improve natural disaster prevention and tourism safety. However, several factors and extreme atmospheric conditions affect drones performance in this type of application. This paper introduces a new test methodology to characterise and validate a drone and its batteries under specific, variable and possibly critical environmental conditions requirements, simulated through several temperature and pressure condition variations. A series of performance tests have been carried out in an indoor facility for extreme climate simulation. These experiments have been focused specifically on the endurance of the drone for the correct planning of operations, on the limits of the payload to be integrated on board and on the robustness of the entire technological solution under specific environmental conditions. The results obtained confirmed the effectiveness of the method to be affirmed. The analysis of the tests presented gave the possibility to characterise with high detail the features and performance of the drone and the entire system employed. Furthermore, some future developments have been identified in order to improve the completeness and the integrity of the methodology.