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Paredes 2016
Paredes 2016
Abstract— Medicine transportation in the Peruvian Amazon This paper proposes a design for a UAV of the quadcopter type
Rainforest is difficult due to environmental hazards and lack of for medicine transportation in the before-mentioned area. Due
proper land transportation roads, which leads to insufficient and to its intrinsic ability to overcome terrestrial obstacles, its speed
improper health services in this area. In order to overcome the
and its simplicity in design, a quadcopter would be most
terrestrial impediment1s mentioned above and remedy this
situation, a quadcopter UAV system is proposed to be used for suitable for this kind of task. The design takes into account the
aerial transportation of medicine. This paper will explain the transportation of low-weight cargo and a structure impermeable
mechanical, electrical and control design considerations taken into to water (in case rain suddenly starts pouring).
account for the implementation of the proposed system.
II. SYSTEM OVERVIEW
Keywords— Aerospace Technology, Aerospace Control Systems,
Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, FEM Analysis, Sensor Fusion. The proposed system is a quadcopter suitable for long-range
transportation of medicine. Figure 1 displays the basic
components of said system. The flight controller regulates the
I. MOTIVATION rotation speed of the rotors via Electronic Speed Controllers
(ESC) in order to control the thrust and torque that these exert
T HE UAV industry has seen increased technological
developments in recent years, thus creating more accessible
flying autonomous vehicles. With it, companies around the
on the system and, consequently, its mobility. The desired
attitude and position is determined by instructions send by a
user via wireless communications or preprogrammed before
world identified commercial applications for said technology, take-off.
namely as low-cost transportation of low-weight cargo
vehicles. Companies such as Google, Amazon and DHL have
developed their own prototypes with the goal of creating
commercial networks based around UAV transportation. Other
companies have focused on more humanitarian applications.
For example, Matternet, in association with Doctors Without
Borders, experimented with delivery drones in Papua New
Guinea [1] with the purpose of delivering blood samples across
this region for faster tuberculosis analysis.
TR = T × SF. (2)
The remaining lift represents the maximum amount of weight The main hub is composed by two carbon fiber plates with a
in grams that the frame may weight, which, in this case, will be thickness of 3 mm assembled by four boom clamps; these
addressed in the mechanical design section. clamps will also keep the carbon fiber tubes assembled to the
In order to estimate the total hover time (th), one must get the main hub through a tight grip. Allen bolts are used to perform
motor current (Im) correspondent to the thrust used before and this assembly. The clamps and booms can be bought, but the
the current consumed by the rest of electronic components (I r) plates will have to be machined, preferably with a CNC mill
(in preliminary calculations, this last value must be assumed). and carbide or PCD milling drills. Figure 3 displays this
The calculation to be performed is the following: structure.
E. Medicine Package
TABLE III
FACTOR OF SAFETY UNDER CRITICAL CONDITIONS
Component Material FoS
Arm Carbon Fiber 3.93
Top central plate Carbon Fiber 4.45
Fig 4. Safety factor of frame arms after performing FEM simulation. Lower central plate Carbon Fiber 3.16
The side of the tube under the clamps is under the most pressure during Standoff connector Aluminum 6061 10.44
a flight. Top box package Plastic ABS 4.01
V. ELECTRICAL SYSTEM distance to the floor and perform landing operations more
In this section, the main electrical components will be precisely. Most of these systems send information through
mentioned as well as the way in which they are all connected PWM signals.
and how they contribute to the functioning of the quadcopter
system. The block diagram displayed in Figure 5 may be used In order to control the quadcopter and use the information
as a reference for the rest of this section since it summarizes its obtained by the sensors, the controller must send signals to
contents. control the generated lift. For that purpose, PWM signals will
be sent to ESCs, which in turn will regulate DC voltage to
control brushless motors.
GPS Module: This device will allow the quadcopter to get Fig. 6. Quadcopter Free Body Diagram
its geographical location and heading in the world, granted
that it doesn’t get obstructed by walls and receives signals Four control variables will be defined to control pitch (ϕ), roll
from at least four satellites. Serial communication is (θ) and yaw (ψ), which will be T, τϕ , τθ and τψ respectively.
commonly used to communicate with these devices.
T = F1 + F2 + F3 + F4 (5)
Ultrasound sensor: This sensor uses ultrasonic waves in τϕ = L (−F2 + F4) (6)
order to measure the distance to the closest solid object. The τθ = L (−F1 + F3) (7)
quadcopter will use this sensor in order to measure its τψ = −M1 + M2 − M3 + M4 (8)
Considering the thrust and moments to be proportional to the
squared rotational velocity, the following can be established:
F = b × ω2 (9)
M = q × ω2 (10) Fig. 7. Proposed Control Feedback Loop
With these equations, a transformation matrix that relates the Controlling the altitude and the yaw required a single feedback
previous variables with the squared rotational velocities can be loop, although an offset must be included in the altitude
obtained, which will be used by the flight controller to send the controller for it to keep countering the quadcopter weight.
correct PWM signals to the ESCs and control the rotation of the Horizontal position control requires two control loops; the outer
motors. loop determines the required pitch/roll according to the position
2
T b b b b ω1 error and the inner loop determined the required torque
τϕ 0 −b L𝑖 0 b L𝑖 ω22 according to the pitch/roll error. This is illustrated in Figure 8.
[τ ] = [ ] . (11)
θ −b L𝑖 0 b L𝑖 0 ω23
τψ −q q −q q [ω2 ]
4
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