Development of Drone-Borne Geophysical Surveys for Mineral Exploration

Drones, also referred as Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) or Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA), are aircraft without pilot on board. Currently the drones are used for geological and topographic mapping, coastal control, landslide inspections, etc., and are capable to integrate geophysical sensors like magnetic, electromagnetic, infrared, radar, natural gamma ray sensors and etc. UAS technology have several advantage over conventional airborne geophysics like resolution, accurancy, cost, etc. We are witnessing the birth of a new branch of aviation, which could be profitably applied to geophysics measurements.In the modern-day advent of new technologies and methodologies in geophysics has become more important than ever before in acquiring better data from the Earth’s subsurface. This advent has yielded a somewhat predicted fusion in the way geophysical data is acquired, by combining the power of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and smaller, more hardware-integrated sensing equipment. Safety and cost considerations very play in the cause and effect of this culture shift in the realm of geophysics, whereas drones are more capable of flying closer to the ground, have greater vertical gradients, require less power for flight, and most evidently, the nonnessecity of human collateral. Ultimately, drones should be, and to an extent is becoming, at least in geophysics, the way of the future.