Search and Rescue Drone (2020)
This project started with one semester of research and design planning. Our group was given the task of building and autonomous aircraft with an image processing feature. We met with our customer early on and kept in contact with him to make sure that we were meeting his specifications correctly and that he was happy with the product's progress. At the end of the semester, we order some parts to assemble a prototype of the drone which can be seen on the left.
|
These parts were assembled into an early prototype of the drone which can be seen on the right. We also had ordered a battery and charger as well which are not pictured in this one. The next step was to try and test fly it. However, we needed either a remote control for manual flight or a telemetry kit for autonomous flight. We decided to purchase both options as they fit into our budget and it would be good to have a manual override incase the autonomous flight had issues. After a few complications, the drone was fully calibrated and a manual test flight proved to be successful. The next step was to get it to fly autonomously.
|
With the help of the telemetry kit and some more configuration, an autonomous flight test was attempted and was also successful. This meant that the main goal of our project was complete, and needed to focus on the image processing. For this, we decided to use a facial detection feature with the help of a Raspberry Pi on board of the drone. This would scan the path that the drone was following and if it detected a person, it was to move towards that person to get a closer and clearer image of them as well as mark their GPS coordinate location and be sent to a leader of a search and rescue group so that a mission could be planned to go out and rescue that purpose. The code for the Pi was nearly finished before Spring Break, but we were told to stop working on the projects and focus on reports for the rest of the semester due to the pandemic. The Youtube video below shows our final presentation as well as a few demonstration videos that I took of the autonomous flight as well as the facial detection program.
|
Here are some of our documents that show in detail how the process of the drone had come together and the progress that we made until we stopped the project.
![]()
|
![]()
|
![]()
![]()
|