Design and Development of Long-range Vision and Telemetry System for An Aerial Platform

Abstract

Pakistan has been frequently hit by natural disasters in the recent past, and the frequency of such disasters is on a rise. National agencies work hard to cope up with the situations to save precious human lives; however, there is still a dire need to develop capable and potent platforms which can fly remotely over difficult terrains and can provide comprehensive picture of the affected areas. For this purpose, in this research, a long range video telemetry system has been developed for use on an aerial platform, an RC helicopter, to make it fly worthy beyond visual range through video signal and other flight sensors data. The proposed vision system consists of a camera, GPS, altimeter, stabilization sensor, air speed sensor, G-sensor and temperature sensors. In order to save the payload capacity of our helicopter, a box has been designed and manufactured from glass reinforced plasticto make it lighter. This box contains separate compartments for the transmitter and other flight data sensors. The video signal is obtained from on-board camera, and other data is overlaid on this video stream and is then transmitted at 2.4 GHz frequency from a long distance. After receiving and amplifying the video signal, the telemetry data is extracted and used as a real time visual feedback to control and maneuver the RC helicopter through communication system when it goes beyond the visual site. The developed vision system is successfully tested from 48 km line-of-sight distance. It is a low cost, small size, light weight and power efficient vision system that can be installed on any ready-to-fly RC helicopter with as low pay load capacity as 2.0 kg.