Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV's) - Hardware and Software Flight Stack

1. Unmanned Aerial Vehicle - Aerial Robotics Muhammad Aleem Siddiqui

2. Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)
An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)
commonly known as a drone is an aircraft
without a human pilot on board.
UAVs are a component of an unmanned
aircraft system (UAS); which include a UAV,
a ground-based controller, and a system
of communications between the two.
The flight of UAVs may operate with
various degrees of autonomy: either under
remote control by a human operator or
autonomously by onboard computers.

3. Types of UAVs
Tri-Copter
Quad-Copter
Hexa-Copter
Octa-Copter
Fixed-Wing UAV
Multi-Copters vs. Fixed-Wing UAVs

4. Hardware Components of Quad-Copter
1. Frame & Propellers
2. Brushless Motors
3. ESC - Electronic Speed Controller
4. IMU & GPS
5. Autopilot - PixHawk PX4 – Navio 2
6. Flight Computer – Raspberry Pi 3 B+
7. Radio RX & Antenna
8. FPV Camera & Video Transmitter
9. Lithium Polymer Battery (LiPo)

5. Block Diagram (Hardware Architecture)
Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)
Autopilot (ArduPilot/ Navio2/ PX4)
Flight Computer – Raspberry Pi 3B+
ESC
Brushless
Motor
ESC
ESC
Brushless
Motor
Brushless
Motor
Brushless
Motor
ESC
Li-Po
Battery
IMU, GPS, Telemetry,
Radio Receiver
Camera, Video Transmitter
Wi-Fi,
Bluetooth

6. ESC (ELECTRONIC SPEED CONTROLLER)
An ESC is an electronic circuit that controls
and regulates the speed of an electric
motor. It may also provide reversing of the
motor and dynamic braking.
ESCs are normally rated according to
maximum current, for example, 25 amperes
or 25 A. Generally the higher the rating, the
larger and heavier the ESC tends to be
which is a factor when calculating mass and
balance in airplanes.

7. BRUSHLESS MOTORS
A brushless DC electric motor also known as
electronically commutated motor (ECM or EC
motor) and synchronous DC motors. Brushless
motor converts supplied electrical energy into
mechanical energy.
Brushless motors is a 3 phase motor which use
magnets to generate power. For this reason,
brushless motors are better adapted, generate
no friction, produce less heating and provide
better performance.

8. IMU (INERTIAL MEASUREMENT UNIT)
It is an electronic device that measures
drone's specific force, angular rate, and
sometimes the magnetic field surrounding
the UAV, using a combination of
accelerometers and gyroscopes,
sometimes also magnetometers.

9. GPS (GLOBAL POSITIONING SERVICE)
GPS is a satellite navigation system used
to determine the ground position of an
object. It provides location and time
information in all weather conditions,
anywhere on or near the Earth where there
is an unobstructed line of sight to four or
more GPS satellites.

10. TELEMETRY
It is used to retrieve flight information of
your drone on your computer or your radio
control in order to follow several parameters
of your aircraft on the ground.

11. AUTO-PILOT / FLIGHT CONTROLLER
•An autopilot is a hardware capable of
controlling autonomous Multi-Rotor drones,
Fixed-wing aircraft, Helicopters, Ground
rovers, Boats, Submarines, Antenna
trackers. There are many Autopilot flight
controllers available in market, i.e.
1. Navio2
2. ArduPilot
3. Pixhawk PX4

12. FLIGHT-COMPUTER
It is a Single Board Computer (SBC) capable of
executing high-level algorithms i.e. Obstacle
Avoidance, Object Recognition and Tracking,
Crops Yield Estimation, Pest Detection, Weeds
Detection and Normalized Difference
Vegetation Index (NDVI) etc.
The most commonly used boards for drones are
following,
1. Intel Atom
2. Raspberry Pi 4

13. CAMERA
It is used to monitor the environment and
surroundings of the multi-rotter drone. It can also
be used for Surveying, Object Recognition, Object
Tracking, Crop Monitoring, Yield Estimation,
Weeds Detection, Pest Detection.
It can also be used for surveillance perspective.

14. Software Required for Quad-Copter & Ground Control Station
DRONEKIT
Q-Ground Station
Mission Planner
ArduPilot Mega
MAVLink (Micro Aerial Vehicle Communication Protocol)
MAVProxy

15. MAVLINK
It is a middleware used for inter-vehicle or
ground control station communication. It
links ArduPilot with DroneKit and any GCS.
It is an open source tool used by both PX4
and Ardupilot autopilots.

16. MAVPROXY
 It is a command-line version of a ground
control station that can establish a
connection with a drone and communicate
using MAVLink. It is an open source
program built on python. It is a command-
line, lightweight program.

17. APM (ARDUPILOT MEGA)
ArduPilot is an open source, unmanned vehicle
Autopilot Software Suite, capable of controlling
autonomous Multi-copter drones, Fixed-wing
aircraft, and Ground rovers.
The ArduPilot software suite consists of
navigation software running on the vehicle, along
with ground station controlling software including
Mission Planner, APM Planner, QGroundControl,
MAVProxy, Tower and others.

18. DRONEKIT
DroneKit helps you create powerful apps that
communicate directly with the APM flight
controller from a companion computer.
It runs computation-intensive computer vision,
path planning, or 3D modeling tasks using the
DroneKit for Python library.
It is the Python and Android implementation of
MAVLink commands in the form of functions.
It gives us high level access of low level drone
autopilot firmware (Ardupilot and PX4)

19. MISSION PLANNER
Mission Planner is a ground control station for
Plane, Copter and Rover. It can be used as a
configuration utility or as a dynamic control
supplement for your autonomous vehicle.
Mission Planner is used to create waypoints for
the autonomous drone flight. Drone will
automatically follow these waypoints once mission
will be uploaded to Flight Controller.

20. Q-GROUND CONTROL STATION
It provides full flight control and mission planning
for any MAVLink enabled drone. Its primary goal
is ease of use for professional users and
developers. All the code is open-source source, so
you can contribute and evolve it as you want.

21. Drone Progression
Application Tier:
Firmware:
Hardware
Crops Monitoring Yield Estimation
Surveying
Security/Surveillance
Inter-Drone CommunicationSpraying Fertilizers

22. Ground Control Station (GCS)
It is an interface to the drone that gives the drone pilot a way to communicate with the drone.
This interface can be used to command the drone or simply receive information updates i.e.
GPS Health, Battery Level, Drone’s Position, Speed, Altitude, Orientation.
GCS can refer to the hardware setup of Ground Control Station, or the high level software
(Q – Ground Station) that presents all incoming data with a GUI.
Communication
Ground Control Station (GCS)Multi-Copter

23. Hardware Stack vs. Software Stack
Flight Controller
Software
Flight Controller Hardware
Quad-Copter Hardware
Ground Control Station
Software
Ground Control Station
Hardware
Communication
MAVLink
(Micro Aerial Vehicle)
GROUND CONTROL STATION
QUADCOPTER