The aim of the thesis was to process the images taken by UAS technology and especially to test the accuracy of this method on the checkpoints of various types. For this testing were used checkpoints that were measured by geodetic method. Subsequently these points were compared with points measured photogrammetrically.

The Diploma thesis is concerned with aerodynamic designi of the ducted fan. The aim of this thesis is to compile the metod of the calculation for the effect of ducted fan. The thesis includes the statistical analysis of compare Rotorcraft, which is used to support the proposal of the basic design parameters. The next part of the thesis contains practical utilization, view of the possible pay load, view of the suitable engines and conrol units. The main part is concerned whit aerodynamic calculation of the stream and fan parameters. In the last part of the thesis, basic parameters of flight performances are calculated.

This diploma thesis is focused on the design of the control software for the unmanned aerial vehicle. Parrot Ar.Drone quadrocopter was a representative of the unmanned aerial vehicle. This thesis describes the way of control and communication with the unmanned aerial vehicle. Based of this information the flight control software for Ar.Drone quadrocopter is created.

This thesis describes design and implementation of SW architecture for autopilot of unmanned aircraft including flight data logging, integration of automatically generated code from Matlab Simulink and communication with ground station.

Nowadays number of UAVs is still increasing. If we want to design their autopilot system, we need a simulation model to test and tune our autopilot design. This thesis is about creating such model fo small fixed wing UAV. This thesis contain information how to create the model, which equations to use and what various parameters mean. One of the possibilities is parameter identification from measured data. In later part of this paper is a small research of this topic and implementation of two of them. Virtual model, which is obtained at the end of this work, accomplished its primary goal and was used to initial autopilot design. Implemented identification methods worked as well, but we didn't succeed in upgrading the model parameters due to the defects during the data measurement.

The future of aviation technology is transitioning to cleaner, more efficient and higher endurance aircraft solutions. As fully electric propulsion systems still fall short of the operational requirements of modern day aircraft, there is increasing pressure and demand for the aviation industry to explore alternatives to fossil fuel driven propulsion systems. The primary focus of this research is to experimentally evaluate hybrid electric propulsion systems (HEPS) for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) which combine multiple power sources to improve performance. HEPS offer several potential benefits over more conventional propulsion systems such as a smaller environmental impact, lower fuel consumption, higher endurance and novel configurations through distributed propulsion. Advanced operating modes are also possible with HEPS, increasing the vehicle’s versatility and redundancy in case of power source failure. The primary objective of the research is to combine all of the components of a small-scale HEPS together in a modular test bench for evaluation. The test bench uses components sized for a small-scale UAV including a 2.34kW two-stroke 35cc engine and a 1.65kW brushless DC motor together with an ESC capable of regenerative braking. Individual components were first tested to characterize performance, and then all components were assembled together in a parallel configuration to observe system-level performance. The parallel HEPS is capable of functioning in the four required operating modes: EM Only, ICE Only, Dash Mode (combined EM and ICE power) as well as Regenerative Mode where the onboard batteries get recharged. Further, the test bench was implemented with a supervisory controller to optimize system performance and run each component in the most efficient region to achieve torque requirements programmed into mission profiles. The logic based controller operates with the ideal operating line (IOL) concept and is implemented with a custom LabView GUI. The system is able to run on electric power or ICE power interchangeably without making any modifications to the transmission as the one-way bearing assembly engages for whichever power source is rotating at the highest speed. The most impressive of these sets of tests is the Dash mode testing where the output torque of the propeller is supplied from both the EM and ICE. Working in tandem, it was proved that the EM was drawing 19.9A of current which corresponds to an estimated 0.57Nm additional torque to the propeller for a degree of hybridization of 49.91%. Finally, the regenerative braking mode was proven to be operational, capable of recharging the battery systems at 13A. All of these operating modes attest to the flexibility and convenience of having a hybrid-electric propulsion system. The results collected from the test bench were validated against the models created in the aircraft simulation framework. This framework was created in MATLAB to simulate the performance of a small UAV and compare the performance by swapping in various propulsion systems. The purpose of the framework is to make direct comparisons of HEPS performance for parallel and series architectures against conventional electric and gasoline configuration UAVs, and explore the trade-offs. Each aircraft variable in the framework was modelled parametrically so that parameter sweeps could be run to observe the impact on the aircraft’s performance. Finally, rather than comparing propulsion systems in steady-state, complex mission profiles were created that simulate real life applications for UAVs. With these experiments, it was possible to observe which propulsion configurations were best suited for each mission type, and provide engineers with information about the trade-offs or advantages of integrating hybrid-electric propulsion into UAV design. In the Pipeline Inspection mission, the exact payload capacities of each aircraft configuration could be observed in the fuel burn versus CL,cruise parameter sweep exercise. It was observed that the parallel HEPS configuration has an average of 3.52kg lower payload capacity for the 35kg aircraft (17.6%), but has a fuel consumption reduction of up to 26.1% compared to the gasoline aircraft configuration. In the LIDAR Data collection mission, the electric configuration could be suitable for collection ranges below 100km but suffers low LIDAR collection times. However, at 100km LIDAR collection range, the series HEPS has an endurance of 16hr and the parallel configuration has an endurance of 19hr. In the Interceptor mission, at 32kg TOW, the parallel HEPS configuration has an endurance/TOW of 1.3[hr/kg] compared to 1.15[hr/kg] for the gasoline aircraft. This result yields a 13% increase in endurance from 36.8hr for gasoline to 41.6hr for the parallel HEPS. Finally, in the Communications Relay mission, the gasoline configuration is recommended for all TOW above 28kg as it has the highest loiter endurance. / Graduate

abstract: Control algorithm development for quadrotor is usually based solely on rigid body dynamics neglecting aerodynamics. Recent work has demonstrated that such a model is suited only when operating at or near hover conditions and low-speed flight. When operating in confined spaces or during aggressive maneuvers destabilizing forces and moments are induced due to aerodynamic effects. Studies indicate that blade flapping, induced drag, and propeller drag influence forward flight performance while other effects like vortex ring state, ground effect affect vertical flight performance. In this thesis, an offboard data-driven approach is used to derive models for parasitic (bare-airframe) drag and propeller drag. Moreover, thrust and torque coefficients are identified from static bench tests. Among the two, parasitic drag is compensated for in the position controller module in the PX4 firmware. 2-D circular, straight line, and minimum snap rectangular trajectories with corridor constraints are tested exploiting differential flatness property wherein altitude and yaw angle are constant. Flight tests are conducted at ASU Drone Studio and results of tracking performance with default controller and with drag compensated position controller are presented. Root mean squared tracking error in individual axes is used as a metric to evaluate the model performance. Results indicate that, for circular trajectory, the root mean squared error in the x-axis has reduced by 44.54% and in the y-axis by 39.47%. Compensation in turn degrades the tracking in both axis by a maximum under 12% when compared to the default controller for rectangular trajectory case. The x-axis tracking error for the straight-line case has improved by 44.96% with almost no observable change in the y-axis. / Dissertation/Thesis / Real-time Flight Test of Circular Trajectories / Masters Thesis Aerospace Engineering 2020

As wireless communications continue to permeate many aspects of human life and technology, future generations of communication networks are expected to become increasingly heterogeneous due to an explosion of the number of different types of user devices, a diverse set of available air interfaces, and a large variety of choices for the architecture of the network core.<br>This heterogeneity, coupled with increasingly strict demands on the communication rate, latency, and fidelity demanded by a growing list of services delivered using wireless technologies, requires optimizations across the entire networking stack.<br>Our contribution to this effort considers three key aspects of modern communication systems:<br>First, we present a set of new techniques for multiple-input, multi-output beam alignment specifically suited for unfavorable signal-to-noise ratio regimes like the ones encountered in beamformed millimeter-wave wireless communication links.<br>Second, we present a computationally efficient estimation algorithm for a specific class of aeronautical channels, which applies to systems designed to extend wireless coverage and communication capacity using unmanned aerial vehicles.<br>Third, we present a new class of multi-hop relaying schemes designed to minimize communication latency with applications in the emerging domain of ultra-reliable and low-latency communications.<br>Each of the three problem areas covered in this work is motivated by the demands of a future generation of wireless communication networks and we develop theoretical and/or numerical results outperforming the state of the art.

UAV applications have witnessed a great leap during the last decade including aerial photography, surveillance, inspection, mapping and many other applications. Using UAVs has many advantages over manned aerial vehicles. Reducing costs and avoiding putting human lives in danger are two major benefits. Currently, most of the UAVs are remotely controlled by human operators, either by having Line of Sight between the operator and the UAV or by controlling it from a ground control station. This may be fine in short missions. However, manually executing long and boring missions adds much inconvenience on the human operators and consumes more human resources. In addition, there is always the risk of losing the connection between the UAV and the human operators which leads to unpredicted, and probably catastrophic, consequences. The objective of this work is to reduce this inconvenience by moving the decision making responsibility from the human operators to the mission control system mounted on the UAV. In other words, the target is to design an on-board autonomous mission control system that has the capability of making decisions on-board and in real-time. Expert system technology, which is a type of artificial intelligence, is used to reach the autonomy of the target UAV. Expert system has the advantage of dealing with uncertainty during the mission execution. It also makes the system easily adaptable to execute any mission that can be described in form of rules. In this thesis, the design, implementation and testing of the expert system-based autonomous mission controller (ESBAMC) is covered. The target mission used to prove the feasibility of the proposed approach is the inspection of power poles. Power pole insulator is autonomously inspected by capturing three pictures from three different points of view. The proposed system has been successfully tested in simulation. Results show the performance and efficiency of the system to make decisions in real-time in any possible situation that may occur during the execution of the considered mission. In the near future, it is planned to test the proposed system in reality.

Unmanned autonomous vehicles, airborne or terrestrial, can be used to solve many varying tasks in vastly different environments. This thesis describes a proposed collaboration between two types of such vehicles, namely unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs). The vehicles' objective is to traverse unknown terrain in order to access a target area. The exploration of the unknown terrain is in this thesis divided into three parts. These parts are terrain mapping, informative path planning (IPP) for the UAVs and path planning for the UGV. A Gaussian Process (GP) is used to model the terrain. The use of a GP map makes it possible to model spatial dependence and to interpolate data between measurements. Furthermore, sequential update of the map is achieved with a Kalman filter when new measurements are collected. In the second part, IPP is used to decide the best locations for the terrain height measurements. The IPP algorithm will prioritize measurements in locations with uncertain terrain height estimates in order to lower the overall map uncertainty. Finally, when the map is complete, the UGV plans an optimal path through the mapped terrain using A* graph search, while minimizing the total altitude difference for the path and respecting the map uncertainty. Collaborative behavior of autonomous vehicles requires highly accurate position estimates. In this thesis RTK is investigated and its accuracy and precision evaluated for the positioning of autonomous UAVs and UGVs through a series of experiments. The experiments range from stationary and dynamic accuracy to investigation of the consistency of the positioning estimates. The results are promising, RTK outperforms standard GNSS and can be used for centimeter-level accuracy when positioning a UAV in-flight. The proposed exploration algorithms are evaluated in simulations. The results show that the algorithms successfully solves the task of mapping and traversing unknown terrain. IPP makes the mapping of the unknown terrain efficient, which enables the possibility to use the resulting map to plan safe paths for the UGV. Traversing unknown terrain is hard for a single UGV but with the help from one or more UAVs the process is much more efficient. The use of multiple cooperating autonomous vehicles makes it possible to solve tasks complicated for the individual vehicle in an efficient manner.