Aerial Surveillance Drone Design Review

1. Aerial Surveillance Drone Design Review Tuesday, March 12, 2013 Colin Donahue Samantha Kenyon Jason Lowden Benjamin Wheeler

2. Overview • Customer Needs • Engineering Specifications • Concept Selection • Design • Risks • Testing • Bill of Materials

3. Customer Needs • Easily Portable — Must be able to transport easily to allow for flying in new areas. • Low Weight — Cannot be too heavy in order to allow for easy transport. • Low Cost — Since this system is for personal use and security it must be reasonable price for the average person.

4. Customer Needs • Easy to Use — It must be easy to use and control for an average person with any range of expertise. • Safe operation — It must operate safely without any chance of harm to the user or other bystanders.

5. Customer Needs • Accurate Control — It must move accurately based on the controls given by the user and therefore allow the user full control over the device. • Intuitive Feedback — It must provide some sort of feedback to the user to be used to monitor the environment for personal security.

6. Customer Needs • Ability to Function Outdoors — It must be able to fly in different weather conditions where the wind speed is below 10 miles per hour and there is little to no precipitation. • Enough Power to Sustain Flight — It must be able to remain in flight for a significant period of time.

7. Customer Needs • Enough Power to Sustain Flight - It must be able to remain in flight for a significant period of time. • Area of interest - The system must remain in a certain area to prevent loss. • Easy to Maintain - It must be easy to fix and maintain to increase lifespan.

8. Engineering Specifications • The total weight of the system will not exceed 5 pounds. • The system will not leave a specified area of interest. • The cost of the system shall not exceed $500. • The system will be constructed with components that can function properly in temperatures ranging from 0°C to 40°C.

9. Engineering Specifications • The electronic components of the system will be enclosed in order to prevent damage from light precipitation. • The system will be controlled by a portable device with switch-like controls for power and data transmission settings. • The system will operate on full charge for at least 8 minutes.

10. Engineering Specifications • The system will detect potential threats from a distance of between 3 and 20 feet. • The system will not exceed 2 feet in width or length.

11. Concept Selection: Quadrotor • Options are • Fixed-Wing • Helicopter • Quadrotor

12. Design: Quadrotor System

13. Design: Communication • Design Concepts • ARDroneLib • Android Freeflight 2 • AT Commands • Selected Concept • AT Commands • Few dependencies on other features • High learning curve, but more control over data stream

14. Design: AT Commands • Data Ports • 5554 - UDP - Navigation Data • 5555 - UDP - Video Stream • 5556 - UDP - Control Signals • Example AT Commands • Sent over UDP port for control data • Takeoff: AT*REF="3,290718208" • Land: AT*REF="3,290717696"

15. Design: Internet Communication • Wi-Fi adapter is required for quadrotor control • Cannot have real-time access to the Internet at the same time • Android devices all Bluetooth communication • Sending images to base station over Bluetooth • Base station will transmit to Internet websites

16. Design: User Interface

17. Design: User Interface

18. Design: User Interface

19. Design: User Interface

20. Design: Threat Detection

21. Design: Threat Detection • Edge Detection • points where image brightness changes sharply • Corner Detection • intersection of edges • Blob Detection • regions where the image is different • a blob is a region of the image where properties are either the same or vary in a defined way • Speeded Up Robust Features (SURF) • relies on integral approximations and the Hessian blob detector • uses a Haar wavelet for features

22. Design: Threat Detection • File Feature Detection • used when the user knows what the threat is • searches in a video frame for matching points with an image file • discards points with low confidence or far away from the main cluster

23. Design: Threat Detection • Dynamic Feature Detection • used when the user knows a threat when he/she sees it • tapping the screen on an object will register it as a threat • uses blob detection to focus on the threat and not lose it as it moves • poorly defined blobs will be ignored

24. Design: Threat Detection • Fast Object Detection • uses blob detection to find blobs in an image • the rudimentary blob detection available in OpenCV is not able to distinguish blobs well • multiple nearby blobs will be considered part of the same blob • a variety of clustering algorithms will be tested to determine which one has the best performance • the movement of blobs will be tracked and fast moving ones will be classified as threats

25. Risks • Target identification • Identifying incorrect targets will cause the system to track the wrong targets. Not being able to identify targets makes the system largely useless from an autonomous standpoint. • When the system is unable to recognize the correct target a user will be able to switch the system to manual control.

26. Risks • Running out of battery • If the system runs out of battery while in flight its fall could damage the payload and motors. • The system will have padding underneath it so that if it falls straight down nothing on the main chassis of the system will be damaged. The battery level will also to monitor to ensure the user can take action if the charge level is low.

27. Risks • Keeping the system in a constrained area • When in autonomous flight mode the system is able to go wherever its programming allows which may not always correspond to a safe location. • The system will be able to switch to manual control mode at any time so the user can stop it from going too far away. A kill switch will also be implemented so that the system can be stopped at any time.

28. Risks • Interaction with surroundings • In order to autonomously detect threats, the Aerial Surveillance Drone needs to be aware of its surroundings so that it can land properly and avoid obstacles in its path. • The bottom of the system has ultrasonic range sensors so it can do controlled landings based on its altitude. If the system hits an obstacle and it reaches an unsafe tilt level then it will immediately turn off its rotors.

29. Risks • Loss of communication • If communication with the system is lost it has to know how to navigate by itself. • The system will attempt to hover in the same location.

30. Testing • User interface • Ben and Jason • Components • Configuration screens • Camera feed • Sensor/status info • Manual control • Switching between control modes

31. Testing • Target identification • Colin and Sam • Components • File feature detection • High speed detection • Dynamic feature detection • Tracking objects in motion • Tracking on low performance devices

32. Testing • Communication • Jason and Ben • Components • Between desktop and mobile applications • Send meaningful data to desktop application • Dynamic feature detection • Camera feed to mobile application • Sensor data to mobile application • Desktop application to social media

33. Bill of Materials

34. Questions?