Design and Development of a Hexacopter for the Search and Rescue of a Lost Drone

• Search and rescue with an autonomous robot is an attractive and challenging task within the research community. This paper presents the development of an autonomous hexacopter that is designed for retrieving a lost object, like a drone, from a vast-open space, like a desert area. Navigating its path with a proposed coverage path planning strategy, the hexacopter can efficiently search for a lost target and locate it using an image-based object detection algorithm. Moreover, after the target is located, our hexacopter can grasp it with a customised gripper and transport it back to a destined location. It is also capable of avoiding static obstacles and dynamic objects. The proposed system was realised in simulations before implementing it in a real hardware setup, i.e. assembly of the drone, crafting of the gripper, software implementation and testing under real-world scenarios. The designed hexacopter won the best UAV design award at the CPS-VO 2018 Competition held in Arizona, USA.

Subject headings

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Elektroteknik och elektronik -- Robotteknik och automation (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Electrical Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Information Engineering -- Robotics (hsv//eng)

Keyword

drones

UAV

competition

search and rescue

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

kon (subject category)