CYSIASTS: About Autonomous Drone Technology for Society Use

Hello friends here i am going to share some information about drone technology and its society use.

One billion people in the world today do not have access to all-season roads.
One billion people, which is 82.6% of India’s population, are totally cut off for some part of the year. We cannot get medicine to them reliably, they cannot get critical supplies, and they cannot get their goods to market in order to create a sustainable income.

India has a total of about 2 million kilometers of roads out of about 1 million kilometers of roads in India are the poorly constructed. India is also home to Fifty-three National highways which carry about 40 percent of the total road traffic. Although the figures look pretty impressive but the underlying fact is that 25 percent of villages in India still having poor road links. Currently India's annual expenditure on the road sector is around Rs 20,000 crore due to overloading and poor maintenance. Few minutes of distance can take half an hour due to this bad road condition. In some places even medicine transportation can take days instead of hours.

So can design and build a better way which is less expensive? Can we connect the whole world in the way that the mobile telecommunications have connected us in the last 10 years? The answer is yes by using this autonomous drone technology we can use it as a global automated network for transporting packages. These drones have a lot of potential; they can be used for surveillances of property. Some countries like Nepal etc., are using this technology for protecting wildlife; making a 3D map of a rainforest or of a valuable historical place.

At present the autonomous drone technology is developing at its highest rate. Drone experts, hobbyists, scientists are working collaboratively; they are sharing about their work experience and in that way they are developing this technology at a rapid rate. They are using it for conservation of wildlife, delivering online products, surveillance, aerial photography, delivering medicines etc.

ARDU-PILOT

Presently developers are developing open source low cost, highly durable autopilot systems for small autonomous UAVs.

ArduPilot is one of the open source unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) platform, able to control autonomous multicopters, fixed-wing aircraft, traditional helicopters and groundrovers. It was created in 2007 by the DIY Drone community.

It is based on the Arduino open-source electronics prototyping platform. The first ArduPilot version was based on a thermopile, which relies on determining the location of the horizon relative to the aircraft by measuring the difference in temperature between the sky and the ground.Later, the system was improved to replace thermopiles with an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) using a combination of accelerometers, gyroscopes and magnetometers. Today, the ArduPilot project has evolved to a range of hardware and software products, and the ArduCopter, ArduPlane and ArduRover software projects.

The free software approach from Ardupilot is low cost and its availability enables its hobbyist use in small remotely piloted aircraft, such as micro air vehicles and miniature UAVs. The DIY Drones community uses the term “Amateur UAV”.
An Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) is an aircraft that has the capability of autonomous flight, without a pilot in control. Amateur UAVs are non-military and non-commercial. They typically fly under “recreational” exceptions to FAA regulations on UAVs, so long as the pilots or programmers keep them within tight limits on altitude and distance. Usually the UAV is controlled manually by Radio Control (RC) at take-off and landing, and switched into GPS-guided autonomous mode only at a safe altitude.

At present the technology the DIY Drones community is using basing on that the researchers, scientists, hobbyists are designing their own designs for developing the society.

Now for transporting a package in most fastest way we need to design a network.The components for that network is given below:-

AUTOMATED LOGISTIC NETWORK

The most common and beneficial use of autonomous UAVs is for transporting over air in fastest way by simply using a network. This network is a automated, ultra flexible and logistic network.

Andreas Raptopoulos is one of the developer and researcher who is trying to apply this technology in North America. His project name is Matternet which transports matters. Andreas Raptopoulos and his colleagues at Matternet are attempting to create a network of drones that operate like the internet, only for tangible objects. The main objective of this project is to create the next paradigm for transportation using a network of unmanned aerial vehicles; that’s the lowest cost, lowest energy, lowest ecological footprint, most easy to set up, most easy to reconfigure, requiring the least upfront infrastructure investment than any other system. The most extraordinary feature of this system is can work in any environment, in the least and the most extreme landscapes and in most weather, can reach anyone, anywhere and creates opportunities and unlocks access.

This network consists of three basic parts. The first is electric autonomous flying vehicles. The second is automated ground stations that the vehicles fly in and out of to swap batteries and fly farther, or pick up or deliver loads. And the third is the operating system that manages the whole network.

All the information i am sharing are basically based the concept of Matternet. Please visit Matternet to know about this technology.

Let's look at each one of those technologies in a bit more detail:-

1)Autonomous Flying Vehicles:- Today, we're using small quads. These are able to transport two kilograms over 10 kilometers in just about 15 minutes. Compare this with

trying to trespass a bad road in or even being stuck in traffic in a developed world country. These fly autonomously. This is the key to the technology. So they use GPS and other sensors on board to navigate between ground stations. Every vehicle is equipped with an automatic payload and battery exchange mechanism, so these vehicles navigate to those ground stations, they dock, swap a battery automatically, and go out again.

2)GROUND STATION:- The ground stations are located on safe locations on the

ground. They secure the most vulnerable part of the mission, which is the landing. They are at known locations on the ground, so the paths between them are also known, which is very important from a reliability perspective from the whole network. Apart from fulfilling the energy requirements of the vehicles, eventually they're going to be becoming commercial hubs where people can take out loads or put loads into the network.

3)OPERATING SYSTEM:- The last component is the operating system that manages the whole network. It monitors weather data from all the ground stations and optimizes the routes of the vehicles through the system to avoid adverse weather conditions, avoid other risk factors, and optimize the use of the resources throughout the network.

Photos and information are copyrighted by their owners.

For detail information please visit:-

1>Matternet

2>Unmanned Aerial Vehicle