S.E.V. Motivation
The unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) has many real world applications but most of all it has significant military applications. UAV’s are remotely piloted or self-piloted aircraft that can carry cameras, sensors, communications equipment, or other payloads. The military interests lie in the fact that they need vehicles for reconnaissance and surveillance missions. With such capabilities with unmanned aerial flight, it would in turn reduce the military’s risk of human loss. Therefore, it would be able to take on more dangerous mission over hostile areas. UAVs can also be used in civil applications, such as firefighting, surveillance of pipelines and rescue type of operations over deserts and forests. Many civilian contractors are also looking at UAV’s for "dull, dirty, or dangerous" type of jobs. With the ever‐expanding role of the United States military in conflicts around the world, one thing that has become apparent is the importance of technological solutions that provide real‐time, aerial reconnaissance to protect the life of the war fighter on the ground. The ability of these solutions to be mobile, rapidly deployable from anywhere and provide extended periods of surveillance is of the utmost importance. At this time, the most utilized solutions have been small, hand‐launched UAVs that can be carried by ground support personnel. This project will focus on such a retrofit to the AeroVironment (AV) RQ‐11 Raven B, seen in Figure 1. This aircraft is quickly becoming the standard for small UAVs, being deployed around the world by both the United States Marine Corps and Army for reconnaissance missions. For the purposes of this project, we are going to use a commercial grade airplane commonly known as “PROJET RQ-11 Raven” for our senior design project.
S.E.V. Project Description
Our design of the system consists of two main circuit boards. A charging circuit that has a maximum power point tracker, which is being fed by the solar panels, that outputs the maximum current to charge the lithium polymer battery in order to extend the flight duration. The second board is the autopilot board which autonomously flies the plane based on a prewritten code that flies the plane and shuts off/on the electric motor at specific altitudes to conserve power. A radio controller can be used to override the autopilot mode in case of emergency. The first and most important function is flight. The S.E.V is designed to fly effectively, hint flying effectively critically depends on the weight of the overall system. Once the S.E.V takes off the benefit of its wing span and area come into the picture. The solar panels are installed on top of the wing to keep charging the battery during flight to help extend the flight time. Its third functionality is that the motor shuts off and on during flight in a predetermind way points. Its final functionality s to return to its take off location and land whne the battery detected low. In case of an emergency the autonomous system is interrupted by a radio control to be manually controlled. Once the radio controller is turned off, the autonomous system takes control of the plane.