Development of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) for Dropping Object Accurately Based on Global Positioning System

Abstract

The paper presents design of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) for dropping object accurately based on Global Positioning System (GPS). It can be used for many applications such as dropping life vests for victims of a ship accident, dropping food for flood victims as well as any other disasters that difficult to be reached by a ground vehicle, and also can be used for dropping water on a forest fire. The key issue here is how the UAV can drop an object precisely on the determined position. The proposed UAV is designed for dropping objects up to four. The electronic subsystems of UAV consist of Radio Remote Controller Transmitter Receiver, Pixhawk Flight Controller, electronic speed controller, twin of brushless motor, GPS, and servo motors. We design the dropping object mechanism using four servo motors as the actuator for close and release the gates. The dropping object mechanism is installed around the Center of Gravity (COG) of the UAV to minimize the COG changing effect. The position of the dropped object can be selected by utilizing mission planner software. We add formulas to adjust the position by considering the UAV speed, altitude, mass of the object and wind speed. The designed UAV has been successfully realized, tested, and joined the Tubitak International UAV Competition in Turkey in September 2018. It has dropping object accuracy of 4 meters when the altitude is 40m and UAV speed is 12 m/s.