In the MuVerDrone project, funded by a 3 year up-scaling grant from European Institute of Technology & Innovation – Raw Materials (EIT-RM), we are developing an UAV for geophysical surveying in relation to sustainable mineral exploration in Europe.
We up-scale, integrate and test various sensors (magnetometers, hyperspectral, LiDaR, Gamma ray) on various UAVs. The project runs from 2018 to 2021 and is a collaboration between DTU Space, Luleå Technical University in Sweden, the French Geological Survey (BRGM), Ofoten Minerals, asl well as the Danish drone developer Sky-Watch A/S
Getting reliable geophysical and geological 3D models of the subsurface is an absolute necessity for successful resources exploration and requires the integration of surface geology with various detailed geophysical data, such as magnetic data, gamma‐ray spectroscopy data, hyperspectral data, and topography data.
Today mineral exploration is often hampered by very expensive surveying methods from helicopter or by incomplete and time-consuming surveys from ground personnel.
In the MuVerDrone project, we intend to develop a general purpose UAV-based survey platform for sustainable raw materials exploration.
We intend to integrate, hardware and software-wise, various geophysical sensors on both hybrid VTOL and fixed-wing UAVs and multirotor UAVs, including magnetometers (a towed single-sensor bird and a wing-tip gradiometer solutions), hyperspectral, Lidar, gamma ray. The multi-versatile UAV platforms will be tested at three sites: northern Sweden, northern Norway and in France.