Designing of quad copter for surveillance and hydrological data collection: Maximizing target acquisition

Abstract

Within the last decade, Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), for a wide variety of applications have enjoyed growing interest. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of the requirements of the medium-range UAV for target acquisition and surveillance. Special emphasis is given to maximizing the target acquisition with application of fuzzy logic. In order to keep the ground target in the line of sight of the camera and to achieve an optimised target acquisition, this paper presents some novel algorithms and system architecture of aerial vehicle (UAV) that has been ground tested to acquire target location using associativity of its coordinate axes. The moment UAV is closer to the target, the base station is informed about its coordinates via GPS and then fuzzy logic is employed to calculate its degree of associativity with the target coordinates. Based on the calculation done by the base station, the Inertial Navigation System (INS) of UAV is commanded for camera control and an optimised surveillance is achieved. © 2012 Springer India Pvt. Ltd.