Design of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle for Campus Area Surveillance

Abstract

This work details a remotely controlled Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) for surveillance. The navigation employs an Arduino based drone control system with an RF transmitter/receiver operating frequency of 433MHz, and an external Bluetooth device for the remote flight control. The developed drone control system was simulated on a Multiwii simulator, the simulation showed that the designed system requires a minimum thrust capable of lifting a weight of 2000g. Thus, each motor (four in all) will have to produce a thrust capable of lifting over 500g. Furthermore, the testing operation showed that each motor requires 1 ampere to produce a 100g thrust. The simulation showed a very stable flight operation at varying directions. The flight time within the capacity of the components used was computed to be 748.8 seconds. The prototype drone is capable of flying for a duration of 720 seconds under stable conditions. In conclusion, this design shows the possibility of fabricating a personal UAV for small area surveillance such as campuses, market place, stadiums, just to mention but a few, at an affordable cost.