Low-cost Remotely Operated Underwater and Unmanned Aerial vehicles: new technologies for archaeo-geophysics

Abstract

In this paper we present a device for magnetic survey devoted in particular for archaeological purposes. The device is able to perform accurate measurements of the total magnetic field, it is a flexible device, programmable by the users to be suitable for any specific need. The device relies upon microcontroller, a digital three axes Fluxgate magnetometer, a GPS, and a Real Time Clock (RTC) module. The device is compact and lightweight to be assembled on aerial and marine drones. Recently, Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROV) and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) gained great potential for archaeo-geophysics because of their versatility and low cost, therefore the magnetometer represents a very useful tool for fast and reliable measurements.