Development of an autonomous flight controller for surveillance UAV

Abstract

This paper presents the different stages of development of flight controller for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with autonomously flying capability. The main purpose of flight controller is to perform a petrol function between given GPS coordinates while maintaining a specified altitude for an assigned time and then return to its launching position without any human interaction. At first a simulated environment was designed to verify the concept. Then this was implemented on actual unmanned helicopter. In wake of the current political and security situation the need for autonomous UAVs and particularly the small scale helicopters are under consideration. However, hobby airframes used for normal radio controlled flying are not readily compatible with delicate, sophisticated and complex electronics. In addition to the hardware integration with such airframes, several other challenges such as electromagnetic interference, communication signal integrity from jammers and damping of strong vibrations were handled. The goal is to develop an autonomous UAV with self-controlled flying capabilities and above mentioned functionality. It should also fulfil the requirements to perform an adequate surveillance during any political and security situation.