ITEE Innovation Expo 2008 : Project Details

FPGA based control of unmanned aircraft

An Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) is an unpiloted aircraft. They can be remote controlled or fly autonomously using a flight plan pre-programmed in to the onboard system. They can also have a base station with which the flight plan of the UAV can be modified and allows the UAV to send back data to the station for further processing. A UAV with the base station is called an Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS). UAVs are mostly used for such applications which are considered dangerous for a piloted aircraft. At present the UAVs are being used for civil applications such as fire fighting, police observation, and reconnaissance support in natural disasters. UAVs are also used in military applications including reconnaissance and attack. This thesis aims at exploring different aspects of designing an autonomous flying machine by building a prototype of a low cost UAV based on commercially available mechanical parts. The designed machine is a quad rotor vehicle driven by electrical motors, powered by lithium-ion polymer batteries. It has a flight time of 20 minutes and can carry 500 grams of payload. It has an on board control system implemented using Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) technology. For now the UAV is flown using a radio system. It also has an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) which contains 3-axis gyros, accelerometers and magneto meter. The FPGA receives the signal from the radio system and generates control data for the four motors accordingly while the readings from the IMU are used to keep the UAV stable. Currently work is in progress on a base station and an autopilot system which will enable autonomous flight with the capability of on the fly updating of flight plan and transmission of recorded data back to the base station.