ECE 4600: Capstone Design I Fall-2016ECHO X Drone

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle with Obstacle Detection SystemAlbert Jose, Ashraf Jaber, and Markos Gerges

Objective: The growth of drone use in many industries is increasing. Companies are constantly looking at ways to improve efficiency. In order to stay with the rapidly growing technology, we explored the use of a collision avoidance system on a drone. After consulting our business sponsors National Aeronautics Space Administration(NASA) and Detroit Aircraft Corporation(DAC), we developed a prototype drone that can detect objects precisely so that a collision can be avoided. This drone can eliminate pilot error and reduce cost of drone maintenance. This technology can be used in a variety of industries, such as warehouse logistics and delivery services. Our prototype allows companies to see the efficiency of collision avoidance technology.Our prototype of the ECHO X Drone uses various sensors to lift off the ground and fly with stable controls. Once in the air, the drone is able to fly around and detect obstacles, even when the pilot purposely attempts to fly into them.

Theory of Operations: Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) have grown more popular amongst American industries over the past decade. With growing demands of UAV utilization, this project focuses on creating a collision avoidance system on board a UAV. The collision avoiding UAV contains a flight controller, microcontroller, and sensors that allow it to completely avert objects and complete given tasks by a user. Collision avoidance technology is an essential part to the future use of UAVs in many industries such as delivery, public safety, and construction. This project provides evident possibilities for growing companies to invest in this efficient and innovative technology.

Key Points for Selecting Your Design:

Schematic Diagram

Figure 1: Obstacle Detection Schematic & Block Diagram

Design Alternatives: We would like to implement a full-printed circuit board integration of all components to reduce weight and costs. Now that this project is proven in concept, it can be considered for mass production and improvements. A major improvement to our drone would be a lidar sensor to replace the ultrasonic sensors. Lidar sensors are very expensive, but would all for the drone to have added capabilities, including geothermal mapping, detection of specific objects like potholes, and full autonomy.

Pictures of the working Prototypes

Figure 2: Weight distributionThe drone is shown here to have even evenly distributed weight in other words the center of gravity is stable

Figure 3: Obstacle detectionThe sensors detects the obstacle in this case which is a hand and the light turns on

Flow-Chart of the Software Code: Show the flow-chart of your code

Figure 4: Flow chart of the program

Discussions of the Experimental Results: Our goal in this project was to implement an obstacle detection system on a drone we created from scratch. This was done through the usage of sonar sensors. However, since of a budget constraint our sonar sensors did not work as well as we were expecting them to work. The sensors we utilized detected objects as long as they were 6 inches away from were the sensor mounted. This isn’t necessarily a good thing for example, if in flight a bird came dangerously close to the drone the drone would not detect it. The sensors also had a range of 254 inches while still good, isn’t the best it can be had we bought expensive sensors.

Conclusions: Overall, we are satisfied with the outcome of our obstacle detection drone system based on the time spent and budget we had. Design, construction, coding, and implementation using the Arduino UNO and ArduPilot was a great experience from which we all learned. In addition, acquiring these skills, we believe is essential for future use in industries.

Related Patents:

Instructor: Dr. Syed M. Mahmud

ECE DepartmentCollege of Engineering

Item Final Choice and Reasoning

Obstacle Detection

Options:-- Infrared sensors-- Proximity ultrasonic sensorsFinal Decision: Proximity ultrasonic sensors (MB1010 LV-MaxSonar - EZ1)Reasoning:-- Consistent and constant looping system in which sensor would loop chronologically without causing interference of sensor reading from sensor to sensor as we encountered early on with HRSR04. -- $15 Sensors, cheapest ultrasonic sensor we could find based on necessary functionality and quality in addition to quality documentation

Flight Controller Options:-- ArduPilot APM 2.8-- PixHawkFinal Decision: ArduPilot APM 2.8Reasoning:-- Pricing was relatively cheap and carries all the sensors for flight capabilities-- PixHawk could not handle continuous sensor data coming at it from 4 ultrasonic sensor on a microsecond base level -- PixHawk also requires a PPM encoder, which is extra cost.

Frame Options:-- 3D Printed frames-- carbon fiber framesFinal Decision: carbon fiber frame ( DAYA 550 Alien Carbon Fiber Kit)Reasoning: Even though the carbon fiber is more expensive, it is much more durable than the 3D printed options.

Battery Options:-- LiPo Battery-- rechargeable AA batteriesFinal Decision: LiPo BatteryReasoning: LiPo battery is less weight and can hold charge for much longer. Also, the connector for the LiPo matched the connector to the PDB