High-Flyer FYDP Brought to you by Group 16
Flying high above the big blue sky
Quadcopter Issues
Problem with Gliders
The three main paradigms for aerial data collection are the drone, the quadrocopter and the weather balloon; each of these has been designed for different purposes. The weather balloon is currently the standard for aerospace research and used for various civilian such as meteorology. The glider drone is used mainly for quick recognisance or for video surveillance from high altitudes. The quadrocopter has become recently well-known due to its high versatility as a low and medium altitude range UAV that can perform complex manoeuvers. This enables it to be used for multiple purposes.
From the three aforementioned UAVs the quadrocopter is the current market leader and is the only design that is able to perform a set of diverse applications which include:
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Precision Agriculture
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Geographic Information Systems
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Environmental Sensing
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Private Security
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Wildlife Monitoring
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Broadcasting Media
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Emergency and Disaster response
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Search and Rescue
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Crowd Control
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HAZMAT Management
However one may notice that there are many applications in the previous list that require a slow moving vehicle to either collect or analyse data.
Civilian planes, gliders and military drones require a minimum forward velocity to maintain altitude; this comes from simple airfoil dynamics. If one desires precise data acquisition where hovering in free space is required rather than continually moving, then any glider is not ideal.
If analysis is performed on the flight time of a standard quadrocopter, one may see that it is not linear in regards to the price of the vehicle for the smaller price range. For around $39, one can get a design that flies for approximately for 7 minutes, while for $63,365 the maximum flight time does not even reach two hours. On average, for every minute of additional flight time that is desired, the price increases by $781. This is a drastic restriction on the current designs because many applications require much longer durations of flight.
If even further analysis is taken into the specific types of applications that require a longer flying vehicle, one may notice that most of these applications are better suited for autonomous motion. Non-autonomous UAVs have limits on distance from radio control, and a consistent user input is required. Many of the times a user is not even required because the data collection is performed in a routine. Furthermore there is a decrease in standardization of data collection with human control as it is subject to variances from erroneous capturing..
Weather balloons are a great research tool as they have the ability to climb high and tend to be robust in their design. However, an obvious issue with them is the lack of control one has over them. These balloons are used when data collection is only required in a vague general area, but would be fairly useless in precise measurement requirements.
Non-Autonomy Drawbacks
Weather Balloon Faults
Assessing the Need
Consequently, the needs statement can be directed to the fact that there is a need for a slow moving unmanned aerial vehicle that is capable of maintaining long flight time and can navigate between destinations autonomously.
Specific examples could include tracking wildlife for large distances, collecting scientific data from hazardous regions such as the recent Fukushima nuclear disaster or realistically any routine data collection.
Needs Analysis
The Solution - The Autonomous Airship
Please look at our 'design' tab above to get further information about our proposed solution.
