Design of a low-cost mobile multispectral albedometer with geopositioning and absolute orientation

J S Botero-Valencia; M Mejia-Herrera; Joshua M Pearce

doi:10.1016/j.ohx.2022.e00324

Design of a low-cost mobile multispectral albedometer with geopositioning and absolute orientation

HardwareX. 2022 Jun 10:12:e00324. doi: 10.1016/j.ohx.2022.e00324. eCollection 2022 Oct.

Authors

J S Botero-Valencia¹, M Mejia-Herrera¹, Joshua M Pearce²

Affiliations

¹ Grupo de Sistemas de Control y Robótica, Engineering Faculty, Instituto Tecnológico Metropolitano, Medellín, Colombia.
² Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Ivey Business School, Western University, London, ON, Canada.

Abstract

Albedo is the percentage of radiation that a given surface reflects. Its study is important to evaluate thermal effects in buildings, generation capacity with bifacial panels, among others. In this work, the design and validation of a low-cost mobile albedometer is presented, which measures the reflection in 8 spectral bands in the visible, additionally the system is equipped with a Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receiver, to reference its position and an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) to know its absolute orientation, make corrections in real time or detect errors. The purpose of designing the mobile device is to measure a larger area and, since it is georeferenced, it is to feed GIS tools that allow designers to use the information.

Keywords: Absolute orientation; albedometer; geopositioning; multispectral measurement; photovoltaic energy; reflectivity.