Falcon Dot D Autonomous Delivery Hexacopter

Project Title

Falcon Dot D Autonomous Delivery Hexacopter

Project Area of Specialization RoboticsProject Summary

The project is about design of an Autonomous Hexcopter. This project will be a prototype for small autonomous aerial delivery vehicle. The drone will use Global positioning system based tracking and localization system and to automatically locate destinations. Main controller will send Global positioning system coordinate back to the ground station using global system for mobile communication module where its position will be displayed on a Google maps. Main controller will also control pitch, yaw and roll based upon the gyro and accelerometer sensors values. Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) algorithm will use for the stability of the drone during flight. The drone would able to carry payload via using a servo gripper which is being controlled by main controller. When hexacopter reaches its destination it will drop the payload using gripper and come back to its starting position. Applications of this project are delivery of medicine, fast food, goods and important documents in the remote areas.

Project Objectives

Objectives of this project is describe below

• It will be fully autonomous delivery hexacopter that will deliver packages to its destination in time.
• The project will be cost effective. Components of the drone are cheap
• Consumption of petrol and labor cost of delivery will be save by using this product
• Drone location will be track and its location will be monitor on Google maps.
• The delivery will be authenticated by two way communication of drone and recipient.

Project Implementation Method

Overall implementation of design is described below:

Flight Controller

A flight controller for drone is usually an integrated circuit made up of microcontroller, sensors, and input/output pins. The simple job of the flight controller is to control the power and RPM of each motor by using the information received from sensors. Flight controller does not know already which type of your drone configuration and specification. So you need to set the specification and type of drone in the software program. Then upload the program in the flight controller. Gyro measures the rate of angular change up to three angular axes. Units of gyro are usually in degree per second. The output of gyro is usually analogue or I2c. You don’t need to worry about the output of the gyro since it is handled by the flight controller code. The gyroscope should be mounted so that its rotational axes line up with the axes of the drone Accelerometer measure the liner acceleration of the drone in up to three axes. Units of the accelerometer are in gravity which is 9.81 meter per second per second. The main characteristic of accelerometer is that they detect gravity with help of this as such can know which direction is down. So, it played very important role in the stability of the drone. The accelerometer should be mounted to the flight controller so that the linear axes line up with the main axes of the drone. Embedded Controller The Embedded controller or main controller is the brain of our drone. Flight controller algorithm is also run in the embedded controller. All the sensors are interface with our embedded controller. Sensors give values to our embedded controller. And then embedded controller control motors according to the flight controller algorithm i.e., PID. Design of hexacopter ESC (Electronic speed control) are devices that allow flight controller to adjust the speed of motors. Since design of drone is hexacopter so six ESC and six b 360kv motors are used in this project. Motors require 22 volts so 6s lipo batteries are used in the project. Tracking Mechanism For tracking drone live location usually GPS (Global Positioning System) is used. GPS use signal send by different satellites around the orbit to determine the specific geographic location. Flight controller have external or on board GPS mounted on them. GPS send coordinates to embedded system then these coordinates send to ground station using different wireless module. On ground station different software used to see these coordinates visually on Google maps.

Benefits of the Project

 Main benefits of the project are

• The benefits that drones could offer in the context of COVID-19, are the speed of delivery, extended transportation network reach to the last- mile, limited physical contact and reduced risk of transmission during the delivery
• Reduced road congestion – Companies are looking into drone technology to do delivery tasks. Lesser delivery trucks or vans on the road will drastically help in reducing the road conjunction.
• Reduced environmental pollution – Delivery drones are known to be more convenient than delivery trucks and are also more efficient. Drones will drastically reduce carbon emission hence protecting the environment to some extent.
• Reduced delivery time – Delivery drones carry packages to the desired setpoint without getting affected by road traffic conjunction and on a planned optimized route. Customers will get their delivery in less than 30 mins.
• Reduced transportation cost – Drone shipping has several benefits for both businesses and customers. Delivery times are reduced from two to three days, down to a matter of hours, plus there is less chance of a package being damaged during transit and handling as drone flight is pretty smooth.

Technical Details of Final Deliverable

These are the final deliverable of the project

• The weight of the drone is about 4kg.
• There will be 6 rotor and 6 5010 360 kv motors.
• Inbuilt stabilizer to deal with wind correction
• There will be on board and external Global positioning system sensor
• On board gyro and accelerometer is used to determine the value of pitch yaw and roll
• There are two flight modes in the project manual and autonomous.
• Global system of mobile communication is used for two way communication between recipient and drone.

•  The drone flight time is shown below in the table:

Flight time (minutes)	Payload (kg)
31	1
15	2
10	3
7	4
6	5

Flight time (minutes)

31

15

10

7

6

Final Deliverable of the Project Hardware SystemCore Industry TransportationOther Industries Others Core Technology RoboticsOther Technologies Artificial Intelligence(AI)Sustainable Development Goals Affordable and Clean Energy, Climate ActionRequired Resources

Elapsed time in (days or weeks or month or quarter) since start of the project	Milestone	Deliverable
Month 1	PID and Hexacopter Theory study	Literature review document
Month 2	Assembly of frame motors esc and flight controller	Hexacopter Model
Month 3	Interfacing of GPS with Pixhawk	GPS coordinates shown on Mission Planner Software
Month 4	Interfacing motors esc with Pixhawk, And remote.	Working Model of Hexacopter
Month 5	Interfacing servo gripper	Payload will be grip and release
Month 6	Testing and debugging	Final Hexacopter Prototype
Month 7	Final working and documentation	Integration of different project parts and documentation