The National Physical Laboratory (NPL) and the University of Bristol’s Hot Robotics facility are proud to announce that registration is now open for a 3-day in-person training course on Uncrewed Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Radiation Monitoring. The course will be held at the University of Bristol’s Hot Robotics facility in Bristol, UK on the 3 - 5 Sep 2025. The workshop/training course is supported by the UK’s Nuclear Threat Reduction Network (NTR-Net).
Recent advances in battery, motor, communication and radiation detector technologies have led to a proliferation in the use of UAVs for monitoring radioactivity in the environment and within industrial facilities. Rotary and fixed-wing UAVs, weighing from 100s g up to 100s kg are now available and are being used to carry multi-sensor payloads for a variety of radiation-related applications. This includes surface contamination or dose mapping, hot-spot locating, and radioactive plume tracking. Autonomy is being realised using Artificial Intelligence (AI), which is enabling UAVs to re-route on-the-fly, for obstacle avoidance and to improve efficiency and efficacy in delivering mission goals. Government agencies and nuclear facility operators are providing the pull for these developments, while academics, instrument manufacturers, and citizen scientists are providing the push. The fast pace of development has created a need for new and dynamic training opportunities, to ensure measurements made by UAV systems are robust and metrologically traceable.
The workshop/training course will bring together UAV radiation monitoring operators, persons responsible for radiation protection and preparedness, academics, metrologists, and students. The workshop will provide an overview of the technologies, techniques and science underpinning this burgeoning area.
The workshop will feature practical demonstrations of UAV radiation monitoring across all three days, provided by the Hot Robotics facility (weather dependent). There will be an opportunity for attendees to operate their own UAVs (or those belonging to the host), subject to completion of relevant paperwork and final approval. Topics to be covered:
Registration is subject to approval. Permission to fly is subject to completion of relevant paperwork and approval. Deadline for submission of flight paperwork is 15th August. All flight is subject to weather.
Please note that filming/photography is taking place during the course for promotional and archival purposes. The photographs and recordings made are likely to appear on our website. If you would prefer not to be filmed/photographed, please let the contact nnuf-hr@bristol.ac.uk