Design and development of autopilot for multiple platforms UAV

Abstract

Unmanned aerial vehicle became most popular among research and scientific community people of its various advantages and applications This research work mainly focuses on design and development of autopilot for multiplatform unmanned aerial vehicle In general unmanned aerial vehicles are classified based on its type weight range application endurance etc Different types of UAV are used for various applications A fixed wing UAV is used for long endurance surveillance application and rotary wing UAV is used for low endurance surveillance applications The advantage of using rotary wing UAV is its hovering capability and it does not need any runway for takeoff and landing Rotary wings UAV are further classified into quadrotor tricopter bicopter hexacopter octocopter etc Each and every platform has its own advantage as well as disadvantages The quadrotor UAV has an advantage of long endurance compared to hexarotor whereas the stability is poor compared to hexa and octacopter The octocopter uses 8 motors to fly its configuration failure of any one motor will not create any impact on this type of platform Recently flapping wing unmanned aerial vehicle (also called as ornithopter) has become more interest because of the potential advantages over traditional fixed wing and rotary wing UAV Flapping wing is a type of unmanned aerial vehicle it can mimic like a bird by flapping its wing The complete autopilot system for ornithopter is still under research and development phase because of constraint in dynamics and weight