Design and Development of a low-cost Inspection UAS prototype for Visual Inspection of Aircraft

Abstract

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) have found a wide range of applications for industrial and commercial use. Most UAVs have an on-board camera, for photography, or surveillance purposes with ground station communications and are technically referred to as Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS). These Commercially Off The Shelf (COTS) models are costly, generally sold and operated by large companies. Considering the three main aspects of an inspection UAS; the camera, the flight controller, and the motors, designing and developing an inspection UAS can be inexpensive in comparison to the COTS UASs. Application based designing can reduce costs immensely, where specific requirements are set out to design the UAS. Setting out the criteria for image quality and size for inspection purposes allows a design iteration to happen. COTS UAS, for example, using high quality cameras that are primarily used in cinematography, but has also been used for industrial applications, is costly and unjustified here. In this paper the weight, current draw and image quality requirements have been analysed, to select components that are suitable for the purpose while being cost effective. This results in a low cost, application based UAS design. As the system is primarily for inspections in preventive maintenance for aircraft, photography-based inspection is the main focus.