A Model for Precision Aerial Drops from UAVs

Abstract

With the advancements of the technology world, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) or drones have become more prevalent in the community. It has been evolving since World War I from generation 1 to the 7th generation. UAVs have become one of the necessary items across all industries. UAVs have many practical applications, and UAVs used in humanitarian missions are one of them. UAVs have been used in humanitarian tasks such as finding trapped persons, delivering test samples to the lab, delivering medicine to remote areas, etc. In humanitarian missions, precise dropping is a crucial point. This research focuses on an autonomous and manual precision drop of payload. The precise drop is more critical when a UAV cannot land and deliver necessary items to the people who suffer from humanitarian missions. The main objective is to calculate the release point of the payload and drop it to the measured target point. Factors that affect payload drop-off are the velocity of the UAV, drag force experienced by the payload, wind, and gravity. After considering these factors, this thesis proposed an algorithm using a mathematical model for precise drop and finding the target. The pre-calculated release point was unsuitable because dynamic variables like the wind will make the error to the actual release point of the payload. To overcome those challenges using the proposed mathematical model, implemented an algorithm to calculate the release coordinates of the payload to drop to the given target on-air and another algorithm to find the target location where the payload drops from the current location of the UAV. For the first algorithm, the ground controller can configure whether the payload can be automatically dropped or not. If it is automatic, then the signal is sent to the servo motor to release the payload. If configured to manual drop, the ground controller gets a notification saying release the payload if the UAV reaches the release point. For the second algorithm, the user receives a mapped area once the user presses the configured button to request the target dropping location of the payload. This algorithm is implemented in a Raspberry Pi. There is designed hardware equipment to carry payload using fibreboard, propellor, and a servo motor. This approach was only tested in Software in the Loop (SITL) and evaluated the results but did not evaluate the real world due to the COVID-19 pandemic.