Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Case Study Proposal

1. Introduction

We are proposing a localized UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) that will be able to lock, track and monitor a mobile target, which in our case will be a person. The UAV will be a quad-copter with a mounted camera, onboard processing capacity and will be able to receive its movement directions from a remote PC. As for localization, the UAV will keep track of its current location using GPS regarding its base station, from which it will take off and land. It will also send its video feed constantly to that remote PC, through which a target will be marked and the quad-coper will get in pursuit of that target autonomously.

2. Problem Statement

Tracking a mobile target can be done by a number of ways. Ground as well as aerial robots can be used for this purpose but each kind has its limitations. Constraints that limit the probability of tracking a mobile target efficiently from a ground robot include uneven surface, navigation difficulty and sudden obstacle appearance, a person or a vehicle, coming in robot’s line of sight thus blocking its view of the target. Therefore, aerial tracking seems a better solution as it involves less complex navigation and provides a better field of view.

Currently,

Base Station will be a predefined point from which the drone will take-off. The Drone will transfer the real time video to the remote PC. From remote PC, A target will be marked and that target will be transferred to the drone and the drone will start following that target wherever it goes. During flight, while in pursuit or not, when the remote PC will generate command to return to Base Station, the drone will come back to its initial take-off point autonomously. Our drone will work within a range of 150-300m depending upon the range of the Wi-Fi transmitter. Atmospheric conditions in which our drone cannot perform its job are rainy weather and windy day with wind speed more than