UAVs are becoming an accepted tool for sensing. The benefits of deployable wings allow smaller transportation enclosures such as soldier back packs up to large rocket launched extraterrestrial UAVs. The packing of soft inflatable wings and Hybrid inflatable with rigid section wings is being studied at the University of Kentucky. Rigid wings are volume limited while inflatable wings are mass limited. The expected optimal wing design is a hybrid approach. Previous wing designs have been packed into different configurations in an attempt to determine the optimal stowed configurations. A comparison of rigid, hybrid, and inflatable wings will be presented. Also a method for simulating optimally packed wings with respect to geometric constraints will be presented. A code has been written to study soft wing packing and verified the soft wing packing results. This code can be used during initial wing design to help predict wing size and packing configurations. In this thesis, an over view of the packing configurations as well as packing observations will be covered such , packing inefficiencies, wing mounting limits, long term storage, and scaling of packing.

Inflatable wings provide an innovative solution to unmanned aerial vehicles requiring small packed volumes, such as those used for military reconnaissance or extra-planetary exploration. There is desire to implement warping actuation forces to change the shape of the wing during flight to allow for greater control of the aircraft. In order to quickly and effectively analyze the effects of wing warping strategies on an inflatable wing, a finite element model is desired. Development of a finite element model which includes woven fabric material properties, internal pressure loading, and external wing loading is presented. Testing was performed to determine material properties of the woven fabric, and to determine wing response to static loadings. The modeling process was validated through comparison of simplified inflatable cylinder models to experimental test data. Wing model response was compared to experimental response, and modeling changes including varying material property models and mesh density studies are presented, along with qualitative wing warping simulations. Finally, experimental and finite element modal analyses were conducted, and comparisons of natural frequencies and mode shapes are presented.

Desde o início do século XX que há registros do uso de Veículos Aéreos Não Tripulados (VANTs) utilizados com finalidade militar. Mas esta não é a única forma que se pode utilizá-los, o ambiente civil também é próspero em possíveis utilizações deste tipo de aeronave. Faltam ainda estudos e comprovações de que a integração dos VANTs no espaço aéreo juntamente com a aviação tripulada convencional não vá trazer alterações nos níveis de segurança já estabelecidos. Juntam-se a este desafio alguns outros, tais como padronizações de normas, classificações e legislação que regulamente o vôo das aeronaves não tripuladas. A presente dissertação faz uma coletânea de alguns modelos relacionados a cálculos de níveis de segurança no vôo de VANTs, bem como compara esses modelos entre si visando o estabelecimento de um método de escolha do modelo mais adequado para aplicação em alguns cenários civis de utilização. Esse trabalho ainda faz a aplicação desse método considerando os modelos relacionados à segurança dos VANTs. / There are records of the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) used for military activities since the beginning of the 20th century. But that is not the only way to use it; the civil environment is also promising as to the use of this kind of aircraft. More studies and validations have to be performed about the alterations in the safety levels with the integration of UAVs in the air space with classic manned air vehicles. There are others challenges such as the standardization of norms, classification and legislation to regulate the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle flights. This dissertation presents some models related to the calculation of the safety levels in UAVs flight, it compares them to establish a method for choosing the most suitable model to apply in some civil scenarios. This work also brings the application of this method considering the models related to the safety of UAVs.

Orientador: Kamal Abdel Radi Ismail / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de Engenharia Mecânica / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-18T00:17:32Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Matsuo_CarolinaAkemiSepulveda_M.pdf: 9560878 bytes, checksum: cc02ac79665887e2f83f47e4a06e3d8c (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011 / Resumo: Os Veículos Aéreos Não Tripulados (VANT's) possuem uma variedade de aplicações, seja monitoramento de incêndios florestais, linhas de energia, tráfego, aglomerações humanas, como também ser usado de alvo aéreo em aplicações militares. Mesmo que ainda seja um pouco restrita à aplicação civil por falta de regulamentação, tais veículos estão sendo desenvolvidos e estudados em âmbito acadêmico. A particularidade deste trabalho é o desenvolvimento de um Veículo Aéreo Não Tripulado para o uso em pulverização aeroagrícola visando reduzir os riscos de operação de vôo tripulado agrícola. Dessa maneira, é apresentada a metodologia usada para desenvolver o projeto, descrevendo o procedimento utilizado para determinar a razão peso-potência e carga alar, e as características geométricas do VANT. Os cálculos da aerodinâmica, desempenho e da estabilidade longitudinal estática do veículo são feitos analiticamente, sendo que na etapa de projeto aerodinâmico, é feita a otimização do aerofólio NACA 4415, e calculado os parâmetros aerodinâmicos do veículo completo. Além disso, por ser não tripulado, é feita a seleção do Sistema de Controle de Vôo de forma a atender os requisitos da missão. Nos cálculos do projeto são usadas as normas técnicas de homologação como a RBHA (Requisitos Brasileiros de Homologação de Aeronaves) a qual remetem às principais normas internacionais: FAR (Federal Aircraft Regulation), dos Estados Unidos da América, e a norma JAR (Joint Airworthiness Regulation). Por ser utilizado na pulverização de defensivos agrícolas é apresentada a tecnologia de aplicação dos mesmos utilizados em aeronaves tripuladas, e feito a escolha do sistema de pulverização para o veículo / Abstract: The Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV's) have a variety of applications, wether monitoring of forest fires, power lines, traffic, crowds, but also can be used for aerial target military applications. Even though it is still somewhat restrict to civil application because of lack of regulation, such vehicles are being developed and studied in the academic sphere. The particularity of this work is the development of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle for use in aerial spraying to reduce the risks of manned agricultural operation. Thus, It is presented the methodology used to determine the thrust to weight ratio and wing loading, and geometric characteristics of the UAV. Analytical calculus of aerodynamic and vehicle performance are made, and in the step aerodynamic design is made the optimization of the airfoil NACA 4415 and calculated the aerodynamic parameters of the whole vehicle. Moreover, being unmanned, it is made the selection of the Flight Control System to attend mission requirements. Technical standards for approval are used to design calculations as the RBHA (Brazilian Requirements for Approval of Aircraft) wich refer to the main international standards: FAR (Federal Aviation Regulation) of United States of America, and JAR (Joint Airworthiness Regulation).Whereas is used in the spraying of pesticides, it is presented the technology of application used in manned aircraft, and the choice of the spray system for vehicle / Mestrado / Termica e Fluidos / Mestre em Engenharia Mecânica

Visual surveillance of human crowds in a dynamic environment has attracted a great amount of computer vision research efforts in recent years. Moving object detection, which conventionally includes motion segmentation and optionally, object classification, is the first major task for any visual surveillance application. After detecting the targets, estimation of their geo-locations is needed to create the same reference coordinate system for them for higher-level decision-making. Depending on the required fidelity of decision, multi-target data association may be also needed at higher levels to differentiate multiple targets in a series of frames. Applying all these vision-based algorithms to a crowd surveillance system (a major application studied in this dissertation) using a team of cooperative unmanned vehicles (UVs), introduces new challenges to the problem. Since the visual sensors move with the UVs, and thus the targets and the environment are dynamic, it adds to the complexity and uncertainty of the video processing. Moreover, the limited onboard computation resources require more efficient algorithms to be proposed. Responding to these challenges, the goal of this dissertation is to design and develop an effective and efficient visual surveillance system based on dynamic data driven application system (DDDAS) paradigm to be used by the cooperative UVs for autonomous crowd control and border patrol. The proposed visual surveillance system includes different modules: 1) a motion detection module, in which a new method for detecting multiple moving objects, based on sliding window is proposed to segment the moving foreground using the moving camera onboard the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV); 2) a target recognition module, in which a customized method based on histogram-of-oriented-gradients is applied to classify the human targets using the onboard camera of unmanned ground vehicle (UGV); 3) a target geo-localization module, in which a new moving-landmark-based method is proposed for estimating the geo-location of the detected crowd from the UAV, while a heuristic method based on triangulation is applied for geo-locating the detected individuals via the UGV; and 4) a multi-target data association module, in which the affinity score is dynamically adjusted to comply with the changing dispersion of the detected targets over successive frames. In this dissertation, a cooperative team of one UAV and multiple UGVs with onboard visual sensors is used to take advantage of the complementary characteristics (e.g. different fidelities and view perspectives) of these UVs for crowd surveillance. The DDDAS paradigm is also applied toward these vision-based modules, where the computational and instrumentation aspects of the application system are unified for more accurate or efficient analysis according to the scenario. To illustrate and demonstrate the proposed visual surveillance system, aerial and ground video sequences from the UVs, as well as simulation models are developed, and experiments are conducted using them. The experimental results on both developed videos and literature datasets reveal the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed modules and their promising performance in the considered crowd surveillance application.

Master of Science / Department of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering / Dale E. Schinstock / The core objective of this research is to develop an estimator capable of tracking the states of ground targets with observation measurements obtained from a single monocular camera mounted on a small unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). Typical sensors on a small UAV include an inertial measurement unit (IMU) with three axes accelerometer and rate gyro sensors and a global positioning system (GPS) receiver which gives position and velocity estimates of the UAV. Camera images are combined with these measurements in state estimate filters to track ground features of opportunity and a target. The images are processed by a keypoint detection and matching algorithm that returns pixel coordinates for the features. Kinematic state equations are derived that reflect the relationships between the available input and output measurements and the states of the UAV, features, and target. These equations are used in the development of coupled state estimators for the dynamic state of the UAV, for estimation of feature positions, and for estimation of target position and velocity. The estimator developed is tested in MATLAB/SIMULINK, where GPS and IMU data are generated from the simulated states of a nonlinear model of a Navion aircraft. Images are also simulated based upon a fabricated environment consisting of features and a moving ground target. Target observability limitations are overcome by constraining the target vehicle to follow ground terrain, defined by local features, and subsequent modification of the target's observation model. An unscented Kalman filter (UKF) provides the simultaneous localization and mapping solution for the estimation of aircraft states and feature locations. Another filter, a loosely coupled Kalman filter for the target states, receives 3D measurements of target position with estimated covariance obtained by an unscented transformation (UT). The UT uses the mean and covariance from the camera measurements and from the UKF estimated aircraft states and feature locations to determine the estimated target mean and covariance. Simulation results confirm that the new loosely coupled filters are capable of estimating target states. Experimental data, collected from a research UAV, explores the effectiveness of the terrain estimation techniques required for target tracking.

Master of Science / Department of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering / Dale E. Schinstock, Chris Lewis / The Autonomous Vehicle Systems Lab specializes in using autonomous planes for remote sensing applications. By developing an inexpensive image acquisition platform and the algorithms to post process the data, remote sensing can be performed at a lower monetary cost with shorter lead times. This thesis presents one algorithm that has shown to be an effective alternative to the traditional Bundle Adjustment (BA) algorithm used for making composite images from many individual overlapping images. BA simultaneously estimates camera poses and visible feature locations from blocks of overlapping imagery, but is computationally expensive. The alternate algorithm (ABA) uses a cost function that does not explicitly include the feature locations. For photographic sets covering large areas, but having overlap only between adjacent photos, the search space and consequently the computational cost is significantly reduced when compared to typical BA. The usefulness of the algorithm is demonstrated by comparing a digital elevation model created through the ABA with LIDAR data.

This Master´s Thesis Usage of drones in the Logistics of the company SKODA AUTO a.s. reacts to the current trend of unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) which are being used in many areas. Aim of this thesis is to analyse laws which regulate the operation of drones in selected countries, to assess suitability of drones for specific process of inventory of empty containers in the company SKODA AUTO a.s. and to suggest an alternative solution for this process. Thesis investigates usage of drones in the Logistics mainly for goods delivery and stock inventory. Mass drone delivery is currently not feasible due to many problems and challenges. Stock inventory has become a reality. Analysis of legislation is focused on EU, Czech Republic, Germany and China. Technology for inventory of empty containers using drones in SKODA AUTO a.s. has a long payback period (21 years) and author does not recommend drones for this process based on this criterion. As an alternative solution, the technology designed at AUDI company is recommended (camera placed on forklift and software for automated container identification).

With devastating natural disasters on the rise, technological improvements are needed in the field of search and rescue (SAR). Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) would be ideal for the search function such that manned vehicles can be prioritized to distributing first-aid and ultimately saving lives. One of the major reasons that UAVs are under utilized in SAR is that they lack a long flight endurance which compromises their effectiveness. Dirigibles are well suited for SAR missions since they can hover and maintain lift without consuming energy and can be easily deflated for packaging and transportation. This research focuses on extending flight endurance of small-scale airship UAVs through improvements to the infrastructure design and flight trajectory planning. In the first area, airship design methodologies are reviewed leading to the development and experimental testing two hybrid fuel-electric power plants. The prevailing hybrid power plant design consists of a 4-stroke 14cc gasoline engine in-line with a brushless DC motor/generator and variable pitch propeller. The results show that this design can produce enough mechanical and electrical power to support 72 hours of flight compared to 1-4 hours typical of purely electric designs. A power plant configuration comparison method was also developed to compare its performance and endurance to other power plant configurations that could be used in dirigible UAVs. Overall, the proposed hybrid power plant has a 600% increase in energy density over that of a purely electric configuration. In the second area, a comprehensive multi-objective cost function is developed using spatially variable wind vector fields generated from computational fluid dynamic analysis on digital elevations maps. The cost function is optimized for time, energy and collision avoidance using a wavefront expansion approach to produce feasible trajectories that obey the differential constraints of the airship platform. The simulated trajectories including 1) variable vehicle velocity, 2) variable wind vector field (WVF) data, and 3) high grid resolutions were found to consume 50% less energy on average compared to planned trajectories not considering one of these three characteristics. In its entirety, this research addresses current UAV flight endurance limitations and provides a novel UAV solution to SAR surveillance.

M. Ing. / Solar powered UAV's have gained world wide attention with aircraft such as Solar Impulse and Quinetiq's Zephyr. UAV's in general are becomming increasingly popular, in 2006 80% of all US military ights over Iraq were UAV ights [38]. UAV's are the the most dynamic growth sector in the world aerospace industry having spent $3:4 billion in 2008 and is expected to be $5:8 billion in 2014. Solar Impulse has a budget of $94 million, Quinetiq has been awarded a $44:9 million contract to build 7 zephyrs. NASA has had several solar powered UAV projects. With advancements in solar and battery technologies solar powred UAV's are fast becomming a reality. The disadvantage of projects such as the Solar Impulse, Zephyr, Solong and Sky Sailor is they have extremely large budgets and have access to non commercial and highy specialized Chapter 1 | Problem Statement 10 products. The main purpose of the project is to develop a solar power system using only commercial products which can substancially increase the ight time of a UAV under sunny conditions. The project has several advantages: The project also provides a clean, green energy aspect. Because the energy provided by the solar cells is free and has no carbon footprint, the project is environmentally friendly; The project uses only commercially available products so it can easily be implemented and reproduced; The system developed for the project is not only limited to UAV's/ the project can be used in other applications such as Solar powered cars or robots. Due to the commercial nature of the big 4 solar aircraft information about their solar power systems is not easily available. The work presented here is an acedemic venture and will be freely available The project has many unknowns such as the size of the UAV, power requirements and available components. The research methodolgy used allows the unknowns to be determined using mathematical models and simulations. The models and simulations are further veri ed and altered accordingly to the actual implementation of the system. The project provides a step by step procedure to building a power system for a solar powered UAV. There are several building blocks in the project. Each building block forms a vital part of the system but can also be designed and implemented as a sigle entity. Only once each building block has achieved its own indavidual speci cations will they be integrated together to form the complete system. There are many risks and limitations within the project. The project is dependant on the type of UAV with respect to power requirements. Therefore the power system needs to provide as much solar power as possible to the UAV. If the available solar power is not su cient for level ight, the solar power must supliment the original power supply of the aircraft in a safe manner. There are many dangers when ying a UAV, if the UAV loses control it could potentially injure or even kill a person. Therefore outmost care needs to be taken to mitigate these risks. By the end of the project a solar power supply, capable of powering a UAV, will be delivered. With the given resources and the current state of technology the project should be a success.