Design of effective landing mechanism for fully autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

Aerial Vehicles have always been an area of extensive research in terms of stabilization and attaining autonomous status for itself. Aerial Vehicles are of various types like quadcopter, helicopter, multi-rotors, drones, etc. Each of the Aerial Vehicle has its own principle of operation and working environment. Quadcopter is the most preferred of the aerial vehicles owing to its simplicity and ease of control. Realizing a quadcopter is much easier and requires less cost. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles requires the aerial vehicle to take decision on its own without any user intervention. This includes the ability of the quadcopter to take off and land safely. The main challenge in the autonomous feature of the quadcopter is to land the UAV in the destination without an operator manually controlling the operation. In this project the landing mechanism of the UAV is monitored using gyroscope and accelerometer without any physical aid and image processing. The altitude value is monitored and the speed of the motors is decreased accordingly. The drones are completely autonomous and could also be instructed to follow a predefined path along the LoC from a remote computer. A predefined map of the surveillance area is fed as co-ordinates into the ARM Cortex series controlled boards. So moving from one co-ordinate location to another will be in a predefined path. A fail safe mechanism is also incorporated so that the working motors make up for the lost motor by running at 120% of the rated speed of the motor.

I. Introduction

A quadcopter is an Un Manned Aerial Vehicle that uses four rotors for lift, steering, and stabilization. Unlike other aerial vehicles, the quadcopter can achieve the more stable condition in the vertical flight. The quadcopter is not affected by the torque issues that a helicopter experiences due to the main rotor. Furthermore, due to the quadcopter's cyclic design, it is easier to construct and to maintain. As the technology becomes more advanced and more accessible to the public, many engineers and researchers have started designing and implementing quadcopters for different uses. Various groups such as the military, engineers, and researchers have been developing quadcopters to understand different technical areas. Here the quadcopters can be used for reconnaissance and collecting data. This could range from the searching for survival victims in a disaster area to checking the state of the electrical power lines. Some of the quad copters in production today can hold light payloads, such as medical and light weight food materials supplies and deliver them to areas where normal planes cannot reach. Many amateur radio operators have designed and built their own multi-copters. Figure 1:

Unmanned aerial vehicle