Design and Analysis of an Unmaaned Aerial Vehicle
Ramesh Kumar Chandak
712me4091
Department of Mechanical Engineering
National Institute of Technology Rourkela
Rourkela, India-769008
rameschandak@gmail.com
AbstractUAV stands for Unmanned Aerial
Vehicle. These are the logical successors of
modern day aircraft and advancement in
automated technology. Modern day UAVs are
mostly used in wars and for defense purposes;
however, these can be used in civilian market as
extensively as in defense sector. Many such
applications in civilian market include:
information gathering in a simulated
autonomous environment, aerial mapping,
imaging radar, monitoring construction
activities, autonomous transportation and
deployment of payload, Rescue operation etc.
The Purpose of this research is to design and
fabricate one such UAV capable of performing a
civilian task autonomously and to analyze its
performance
KeywordsUAV, civilian operation, Quadrotor
aerial robot,
I. INTRODUCTION
UAVs are also known as drone, RPV (Remotely
Piloted Vehicle), pilotless aircrafts and many such
names. UAVs can be defined as aerial vehicle that
do not carry a pilot; use aerodynamic forces to fly,
can fly autonomously or pilot operating remotely,
and can carry a payload [1]. Modern day Wartime
situations raise the demand of UAVs for information
gathering, throwing bombs and explosive at certain
place, Rescue operation etc. UAVs offer two
advantages over traditional manned aircrafts: they
are cost effective as there is no on-board pilot, and
they dont include the risk of pilots life. However,
accident rate in case of UAV is 100 times more than
that of manned aircraft.
Much progress has been made in the field of
UAVs since its introduction. UAVs can gather
information in a simulated autonomous
environment. They can work without GPS and
navigate in a nuclear power plant [2]. There can be
collaboration and co-ordination between two or
more than two flying UAVs and they can perform
the task together [3].
Control system used for UAV can be pilot
augmented system which will allow a n experienced
pilot to fly the aircraft [4]. UAVs can also be made
in flapping wing style which are aerodynamically
more efficient at small Reynolds number when
viscosity effect dominates airflow.
UAVs can be used for stationary hovering over a
single location. Neural network can be used for
control purposes of these kind [5]. Small scale
UAVs can be designed with simple EPP foam,
transmitter and receiver, brushless motors, servos
and electronic speed controller; capable of aerial
surveillance, remote sensing, scientific research, etc.
[6].
Aerial mapping can be done through UAVs using
aerial and terrestrial photogrammetry [7]. A 3D
imaging radar concept suitable for UAV has also
been developed [8]. In fact, 3D imaging in this way
is more economic in terms of power consumption
and size of antennas.
Wings of UAVs can change shape in case of
unmanned aircrafts. This concept is called
Morphology. It is implemented in order to meet
mission changing requirements of the aircraft and to
perform flight control without the use of
conventional control surfaces [9].
Separate control system using light weight
sensors can be made in order to make the flight of
the rotary wing UAV easier [9]. Altitude
stabilization is the main problem in case of UAVs.
In order to solve this problem a new quaternion
based feedback control scheme for exponential
attitude stabilization of a four rotor quadcopter has
been proposed [10].
Aerial robots can be used to take photographs,
record video, install cameras, prepare report of
construction progress and do analysis. For this
purpose, knowledge of computer vision, image
processing & machine learning is required [11].
Now-a-days UAVs are capable of Autonomous
Transportation & deployment for research and
rescue operation [12]. Quadrotors capable of
searching stationary items autonomously in a
bounded region have also been prepared [13].
UAVs range from an insect size to the size of that
a commercial airliner. The type of UAV we are
going to fabricate is a quadcopter; which is a kind of
middle range, capable of vertical lift-off and
landing. It will be remotely piloted from an operator
on land. It will perform certain civilian task while in
the air.
II. LITERATURE REVIEW
There have been a large number of papers in recent
years describing the dynamics and control system of
quadrotors [3], as well as detailed efforts in
constructing and flying these vehicles.
The Draganflyer is a quadrotor of RC Toys that has
on-board electronics which includes a receiver for
pilot input, three piezo gyroscopes and a
microcontroller to control the quadrotor
movements, and a rechargeable battery pack to
power its electronics and four motors. The recent
version of this product has four infrared heat
sensors to allow it to level itself while flying
outdoors.
The EADS Quadcopter MAV is an impressive
unmanned air vehicle intended to be a testbed for
developing micro air vehicle flight control. But it is
now being pursued for industrial applications due to
its promising performance [21]. The on-board
electronics includes a micro autopilot, an R/C
receiver, a 16 bit analog to digital converter, and
several power amplifiers to drive the motors. The
autopilot system has a six degree of freedom
MEMS inertial measurement unit, air data sensors,
and a GPS receiver. The Quadocopter is capable of
a 20 minutes flight with one time charging of its
lithium batteries. The vehicle is small. It weighs
about half a kilogram, and has a detachable fuselage
so it can be stored in a power backup system. The
UAV has excess power margin to carry out
maneuvers and to carry small payloads, such as a
camera or a radar .
The X-4 Flyer is a quadrotor which was developed
in Australia and uses an IMU that contains
gyroscopes, accelerometers, magnetometers, and a
microcontroller [15]. Recent research has
emphasized the design and construction of a
quadrotor with inverted rotors implementing a
teetering design. Simulations of the new quadrotor
indicated that the vehicle has slightly unstable
dynamics; but it could be easily flown by a human
pilot.
Research at the University of Pennsylvania [22]
focused on using both an on-board and a ground
camera to estimate the orientation and location of a
commercially available quadrotor for cooperative
missions between air and ground robots.
Cornell University worked on using an off-board
vision system and three on-board gyroscopes along
with Kalman filters in order to take benefit from the
desirable qualities of the low frequency data from
the vision system and the high frequency data from
the gyroscopes [23]. Another group at Cornell
University designed and built a heavier quadrotor
givimg special consideration to the thrust producing
units and the vehicle structure. A commercial IMU
was used and damaged during flight testings [24].
The unit was too expensive to replace; so it was
repaired.
A research group of France used a Draganflyer
frame as a test bed for control algorithms [25]. The
three gyroscopes of the Draganflyer were used for
an inner stabilization loop. An external 3D
electromagnetic tracking device was used to
measure the orientation and position of the
Draganflyer. A modified Draganflyer was used at
Stanford for the Stanford Testbed of Autonomous
Rotorcraft for Multi-Agent Control (STARMAC)
[26]. The electronics of the Draganflyer has been
replaced with an IMU, two microcontrollers, an
ultrasound sensor, and a differential GPS unit.
There is also a Bluetooth device in order to
facilitate communication between the quadrotor and
the ground station which includes a laptop and a
cluster of personal computers. The quadrotor
performed well in outdoor hovering tests while
tracking a commanded attitude and altitude.
Quadrotors are most useful when they are semi-
autonomous or autonomous so that their operators
can perform other tasks while flying the vehicles.
III. OBJECTIVE AND
METHODOLOGY
The outline of the project is to design, analyse and
fabricate an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle. The sector
of UAV which is going to be dealt with in the
research is fabrication of a quadcopter which
capable of performing certain civilian task. In short,
objective of the research can be summarised as:
1) To design the model of a quadcopter
2) To do analysis for the stability and strength
of it.
3) To perform some civilian task with the help
of it.
Methodology followed for the above task is:
1) Extensive literature review to analyse and to
take guidance from previously done work in
the area of quadcopters.
2) A solid model was made of the finalised
quadcopter structure in the commercially
available software. i.e. CATIA
3) Analysis was done for attitude stabilisation
of quadcopter and strength and stability
analysis was also done for performing
civilian task.
4) A model has to be fabricated and tested in
real conditions.
IV. ANALYSIS ON WORK DONE
A quadrotor unmanned air vehicle has four rotors
and requires no cyclic or collective pitch. A
quadrotor UAV can be highly manoeuvrable, has
the potential to hover and to take off, fly, and land
in small areas, and can have simple control
mechanisms. However, because of its low rate
damping, electronic stability augmentation is
required for stable flight.
A quadrotor has four motors located at the front,
rear, left, and right ends of a cross frame. The
quadrotor is controlled by changing the speed of
rotation of each motor. The front and rear rotors
rotate in a counter-clockwise direction while the left
and right rotors rotate in a clockwise direction to
balance the torque created by the spinning rotors.
The relative speed of the left and right rotors is
varied to control the roll rate of the UAV.
Increasing the speed of the left motor by the same
amount that the speed of the right motor is
decreased will keep the total thrust provided by the
four rotors approximately the same. In addition, the
total torque created by these two rotors will remain
constant. Similarly, the pitch rate is controlled by
varying the relative speed of the front and rear
rotors. The yaw rate is controlled by varying the
relative speed of the clockwise (right and left) and
counter-clockwise (front and rear) rotors. The
collective thrust is controlled by varying the speed
of all the rotors simultaneously.
A quadrotor has some advantages over other rotary
wing UAVs. It is mechanically simple and is
controlled by only changing the speed of rotation
for the four motors. Since the yaw rate is controlled
by changing motor speed, a tail rotor is not required
to control yaw rate and all thrust can be used to
provide lift. A quadrotor may also be able to fly
closer to an obstacle than conventional helicopter
configurations that have a large single rotor without
fear of a rotor strike.
The vehicles dynamics are good for agility and its
four rotors can allow increased payload. However,
the dynamics of the quadrotor can make the vehicle
difficult to control. The challenge of controlling the
vehicle can be even more difficult for a small, low
cost quadrotor.
Based on the above analysis a model was prepared
in the CATIA. For analysis ANSYS software was
used. Analysis was done for three aspects:
1. To calculate the equivalent stress induced
and total deformation for free fall form a
height of 30cm
2. To calculate the equivalent stress induced
and total deformation while manuevering at
a height upto 100m
3. To calculate the equivalent stress induced
while thrust on the quadrotor is maximum
Below are the Photographs of the result of the
above mentioned analysis respectively.
 V. CONCLUSION
Thus the model was analysed in ANSYS
Multiphysics and the result showed that the above
designed quadrotor can take a flight. Thus the work
on fabricating the quadrotor as per the CAD design
has begun.
VI. REFERENCES
[1] E. Bone and C. Bolkcom, Unmanned Aerial
Vehicle: Background and Issues for Congress,
Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division, April
25, 2003
[2] N. Edwards, C. Edwards, B. Nelson and J.
Tomlinson, Design and implementation of an
autonomous aerial vehicle for information gathering
in a simulated autonomous environment, 2009
[3] F.B. da Silva, S.D. Scott and M.L. Cummings,
Design methodology for unmanned aerial vehicle
team coordination, Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, December 2007
[4] P. Pounds, R. Mahony, P. Hynes and J. Roberts,
Design of a four rotor aerial robot, Australian
Conference on Robotics and Automation,
Auckland, 27-29 November 2002, pp. 145-150
[5] J. Borenstein, The HoverBot- An electrically
powered flying robot, The University of Michigan,
Ann Arbor, Unpublished
[6] Prithvish Mamtora, Sahil Shah, Vaibhav Shah
and Vatsal Vasani, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
(UAV), IJECET, Volume 4, Issue 5, September
October, 2013, pp. 187-191
[7] H. Eisenbeiss, The potential of Unmanned
Aerial Vehicle for mapping, Eisenbeiss, 2009
[8] M. Weib, J.H.G. Ender, A 3D imaging radar
for small unmanned airplanes- ARTINO, FGAN,
Germany
[9] S. D. Hanford, L. N. Long and J. F. Horn, A
small semi autonomous rotary wing unmanned air
vehicle (UAV), The Pennsylvania State University
Park, PA, 16802
[10] A. Tayebi and S. McGilvray, Attitude
stabilization of a four rotor aerial robot, 43rd IEEE
Conference on Decision and Control, December 14-
17, 2004, pp. 1216-1221
[11] http://cee.illinois.edu/golparvarfard_UAV2015
[12] M. Bernard, K. Kondak, I. Maza and A. Ollero,
Autonomous transportation and deployment with
aerial robots for search and rescue missions,
Journal of field robotics 28(6), 2001, pp. 914-931
[13] S. Carpin, N. Basilico, T. Chung, M. Kolsch,
Variable Resolution Search with Quadrotors:
Theory and Practice, Journal of field robotics
30(5), 2013, pp. 685-701
[14] Altug, E., Ostrowski, J.P., Mahony, R.,
Control of a quadrotor helicopter using visual
feedback, Proceedings of the IEEE International
Conference on Robotics and Automation,
Washington, D.C., 2002, pp 7277
[15] Pounds, P., Mahony, R., Gresham, J., Corke,
P., Roberts, J., Towards Dynamically-Favourable
Quad-Rotor Aerial Robots, Proceedings of the
2004 Australasian Conference on Robotics and
Automation, Canberra, Australia, 2004.
[16] Pounds, P., Mahony, R., Hynes, P., Roberts, J.,
Design of a Four-Rotor Aerial Robot,
Proceedings of the 2002 Australasian Conference
on Robotics and Automation, Auckland, New
Zealand, 2002, pp. 145-150.
[17] Hamel, T., Mahony, R., Lozano, R., Ostrowski,
J., Dynamic Modelling and Configuration
Stabilization for an X4 Flyer, IFAC 15th Triennial
World Congress, Barcelona, Spain, 2002.
[18] Hamel, T., Mahony, R., Chriette, A., Visual
servo trajectory tracking for a four rotor VTOL
aerial vehicle, Proceedings of the IEEE
International Conference on Robotics and
Automation, Washington, D.C., 2002, pp. 2781
2786.
[19] berg, M., 4xFanSaucer, M.S. Thesis, KTH
Signals Sensors and Systems, Stockholm, Sweden,
2004.
[20] M. Chen and M. Huzmezan , A combined
MBPC/2 DOF Hcontroller for a Quad Rotor UAV,
AIAA Atmospheric Flight Mechanics Conference
and Exhibit, Austin, Texas, 2003.
[21] Arning, R.K., Sassen, S., Flight Control of
Micro Aerial Vehicles, AIAA Guidance,
Navigation, and Control Conference, Providence,
Rhode Island, 2004.
[22] Altug, E., Ostrowski, J.P., Taylor, C.J.,
Quadrotor control using dual camera visual
feedback, Proceedings of IEEE International
Conference on Robotics and Automation, Taipei,
Taiwan, 2003, pp. 42944299.
[23] Earl, M.G., DAndrea, R., Real-Time Attitude
Estimation Techniques Applied to a Four Rotor
Helicopter, Proceeding of the 43rd IEEE
Conference on Decision and Control, Atlantis,
Paradise Island, Bahamas, 2004, pp.3956-3961.
[24] Nice, E.B., Design of a Four Rotor Hovering
Vehicle, M.S. Thesis, Cornell University, Ithaca,
NY, 2004.
[25] Castillo, P., Dzul, A., Lozano, R., Real-Time
Stabilization and Tracking of a Four-Rotor Mini
Rotorcraft, IEEE Transactions on Control Systems
Technology, Vol. 12, No. 4, July 2004.
[26] Hoffmann, G., Rajnarayan, D.G., Waslander,
S.L., Dostal, D., Jang, J.S., Tomlin, C.J., The
Stanford Testbed of Autonomous Rotorcraft for
Multi Agent Control (STARMAC), Proceedings of
the 23rd Digital Avionics Systems Conference,
Salt Lake City, Utah, November, 2004.
[27] Roberts, J.M., Corke, P.I., Buskey, G., Design
of a Four-Rotor Aerial Robot, Proceedings of the
2002 Australasian Conference on Robotics and
Automation, Auckland, New Zealand, 2002, pp. 71-
76.