Design Model and Applications of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
Open Access
- Author:
- Christ, Joshua
- Area of Honors:
- Electrical Engineering
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Science
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- David Cubanski, Thesis Supervisor
Julio Urbina, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- Engineering
Technology
Design - Abstract:
- As technology in aviation continues to improve, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) are certain to become a mainstream device. UAV have the ability to be designed and produce to the user’s specification. Most notably, UAVs currently have a major foothold in media, where reporters have the ability to scout dangers or unreachable area with ease. To that point, UAVs are also critical for search and rescue efforts, given the wide area a UAV can cover along with being equipped with a thermal camera to speed up rescue efforts. Some up and coming fields that UAVs are beginning to reach is crop irrigation and fertilization as well as delivery services. For crop irrigation and fertilization, UAVs have the advantage of covering the wide area in little time while being able to maintain an equal distribution of liquid or pesticide. Delivery via UAV have also been researched and implemented, however current restrictions and regulations by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) dampen these efforts until safer and more reliable UAVs can be mass produced. In this project, a robust bare-bones UAV was designed and tested with the intention of incorporating an on-going Capstone project within the Penn State School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. A prototype simple UAV was built and tested in the electrical engineering’s design process course. This design was then used to assist in the build of a large robust UAV in the electrical engineering Capstone course. Each aspect of the build was recorded and written into formal work instructions so prospective students in the future will have the ability to replicate and duplicate the UAV built in this project. From here, students will be able to modify and design a purpose-built UAV to their desired application. When testing the final build of the UAV, stable flight was accomplished with some minor notes for optimization. The sensitivity of the UAV remote can be improved so less experienced users can handle the UAV with more ease. Also, the UAV was flown in steady winds of 9mph which led to a slight drift in flight. This can be addressed by adjusting the proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller reasonably for stability. It should be noted that both of these systems are heavily dependent on the weight and configuration of the UAV. Therefore, these systems will need to be continually updated for each purpose build of the UAV.