A Review of Collaborated Educational Drone Development and Design at the BRICS 2018 Future Skills Challenge

Abstract

Unmanned aerial vehicles, remote piloted aircraft systems, or drones, have the ability to enable autonomy in manufacturing environments through self-charging and maintenance diagnostics. Drone development for manufacturing application was exploited in the BRICS 2018 (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) Future Skills Challenge. The challenge was completed over a period of three (3) days and five (5) teams participated in designing and manufacturing unique drones and self-charging stations. Quadcopters and base stations were designed and developed for manual flight and self-charging for autonomous production environments. The paper discussed design elements in terms of mechanical design, mechatronic design, flight control optimisation and drone performance criteria. The drones were evaluated according to work organisation and management, manufacturing and assembly principles, programming and testing standards, and commissioning performance criteria. The results of each design group from the evaluation were compared and discussed accordingly. The evaluation was done through subjective visual inspections for quality and could potentially misinterpret the results of the assessment. A technical evaluation approach is recommended to evaluate drone performance, utilising in-flight measuring instruments for repeatability and stable flight.