Developing UAV’s for Practical Applications (original) (raw)

Unmanned aerial vehicles as tools for forest-fire fighting

Forest Ecology and Management, 2006

This paper reviews the possibilities of UAV applications to forest-fire fighting in the typical before-during-after scheme. Before-fire they can be used for monitoring of the vegetation and the estimation of hydric stress and risk index. UAVs can also be applied for forest-fire detection, confirmation, localisation and monitoring. Finally, the UAVs are also useful for the evaluation of the fire effects and particularly for the estimation of the burnt area. The paper also shows how UAV with different characteristics can cooperate in forest-fire fighting. Some of the concepts and applications presented in the paper are illustrated by means of recent experimental results carried out in the COMETS project. In this project a fleet of heterogenous UAVs was applied for forest-fires detection, confirmation, localization and monitoring.

Design Considerations of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle for Aerial Filming

arXiv (Cornell University), 2022

Filming sport videos from an aerial view has always been a hard and an expensive task to achieve, especially in sports that require a wide open area for its normal development or the ones that put in danger human safety. Recently, a new solution arose for aerial filming based on the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), which is substantially cheaper than traditional aerial filming solutions that require conventional aircrafts like helicopters or complex structures for wide mobility. In this paper, we describe the design process followed for building a customized UAV suitable for sports aerial filming. The process includes the requirements definition, technical sizing and selection of mechanical, hardware and software technologies, as well as the whole integration and operation settings. One of the goals is to develop technologies allowing to build low cost UAVs and to manage them for a wide range of usage scenarios while achieving high levels of flexibility and automation. This work also shows some technical issues found during the development of the UAV as well as the solutions implemented.

The Availability of UAV Systems for Agricultural Purposes

2016

Unpiloted aerial vehicles with built-in power system, carrying useful freight, let to fly automatically or by a remote control system are called Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. The UAVs used for various purposes in civil and military fields today, too, have exhibited development as result of developments in aviation, electronics, communications and navigation technologies in parallel with the developments which occurred in the field of science and technology in the 20. century. These have ensured ease of use and exhibited a rapid increase due to reasons such as, the sensor systems have become smaller, mobility has increased and they can fly at lower altitudes. Use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) has become widespread in recent times as result of this. Particularly, in addition to imaging studies, use of UAV vehicles has come in the agenda for photogrammetric surveys in small scale areas against manned air vehicles, landslide and erosion monitoring, and for purposes of observing agricul...

DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF AN UNMANNED AERIAL VEHICLE (UAV) FOR IMAGE CAPTURE IN ENTERPRISE FARMING

Nigerian Journal of Technology (NIJOTECH), 2024

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), also known as drone is one of the most interesting emerging technologies with a wide range of applications including agriculture, surveillance, security, search and rescue, mapping, farmland surveying, and wildlife conservation, among others. In Nigeria, UAV is gaining popularity in applications such as in social functions for taking both moving and static pictures, military and security, mapping and agriculture. In this work, an UAV was designed, some components produced by 3D printing, coupled and tested with certain level of local content in view. The UAV is a quadcopter equipped with a camera for real-time image capture of farmlands and it can perform autonomous missions by using global positioning system (GPS) waypoints. The weight of the quadcopter was approximately calculated and hence the electrical and mechanical components selected using a standard empirical design table. The thrust to weight ratio was set at 2:1. Autodesk Maya and Inventor software were used to design the frame in two parts: the frame arms on which the propellers are mounted and the central connecting part that links the four arms. The arms are made up of aluminum square pipes while the central connecting part for the arms was printed with a 3D printer (200 x 200 x 200 Wanhao duplicator i3) using PolyEthylene Terephthalate Glycol (PETG) Filament material of 1.75mm standard gauge. Material selection was based on material strength, cost and availability. NCH Debut video and image capture software was used to record live feeds from the UAV onboard camera. Functionality tests for lift, stability, yaw, roll, pitch, loiter, auto landing, return to launch, flight time, altitude/signal, auto mission using GPS waypoints were carried out with the completed UAV on a less windy day to avoid the influence of wind. It was generally observed that the UAV successfully took off the ground, gained stability, flew to over 100m height, captured aerial photographs of the land below it while on flight at the required height and landed safely. Cost saving advantage of 45.28% was achieved when compared to imported equivalent types.

A Dual-Use Unmanned Aerial System for Precision Agriculture and Search and Rescue Applications

AIAA Infotech @ Aerospace, 2016

This paper presents the design, construction, testing, and results of the project assigned to the 2014 NASA Langley Research Center Aeronautics Academy. The Academy was tasked with delivering one Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) capable of performing both Search and Rescue (SAR) and Precision Agriculture (PA) missions. The aircraft was constructed using primarily Commercial off-the-Shelf (COTS) electronics and flight hardware housed in a custom-fabricated airframe. The UAS, named TIGRESS (Technology in Ground Rescue and Environmental Stress Sensing) is capable of long-endurance autonomous flight, live video streaming, autonomous detections of persons, creation of Normalized Density Vegetation Index (NDVI) maps, and has completed four successful flights. The results of the flight tests, the design, and the construction methods are presented. Additionally, recommendations for further tests are presented.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles an Overview and Applications

Graduate Research in Engineering and Technology

A drone that is not manned Automated vehicles are rational admirers of the latest planes, and they're always looking for ways to improve. Wartime and re-exploration capabilities are the primary emphases of the current generation of UAVs, leaving the existing market impacted by UAV technology unaffected. UAV technology has a wide range of current uses, ranging from emergency response to media to agriculture to communications experts. However, the adaptable unmanned aerial vehicle is not yet available to the general public. As a result, a UAV that can carry a wide range of flexible tools should be light and lightweight. In commercial applications, UAV technological ideas and adaptable components may be a strong instrument, and they can help define the future of aviation. It is possible to categorize "drones" depending on their "applications," such as photography, aerial mapping, surveillance, and so on. However, the easiest way to classify 'Drones' is t...