AUTOMATIC ROBOTIC DRONE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (ARDMS)

The ARDM system is made up of three sub-systems

 UAV camera Drone, which provides regular monitoring and surveillance of the plant habitats.

 APDR system, which is necessary to interpret image data from the camera Drone system in order to identify objects corresponding to potential pests.

 Pest Predators/Parasitoid wasps’ Statistical system (APS), which defines the pest control strategy to be taken.

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Figure 4. 2 Proposed Automatic Robotic Drone Management System (ARDMS)

4.2.1 THE AUTOMATIC ROBOTIC DRONE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (ARDMS) STRUCTURE

The ARDMS is designed with the following sub-systems: Storm Drone 6 GPS

(www.helipal.com); Pest UAV Carriage Box (PUCB); Walkera DEVO 7 7-Channel 2.4Ghz

Digital Radio System; Control system; Naturally Beneficial insect’s e-database (NBI).

4.2.2 THE AUTOMATIC ROBOTIC DRONE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (ARDMS) PLAN

ARDMS is a Pest surveillance system. It is designed just like the usual UAV camera drone systems, made to operate locally with negligible legal restrictions, with minimum take-off weight of 1250g to 2.5kg and the maximum flight altitude of 50m to 200m, endurance will

APS

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be 30 minute to 60minute and the data link range will be from ½ km to 5 km. The Robotic Drone used in this simulation analysis is the Storm Drone 6 GPS system.

The storm Drone 6 GPS is a light weight Hexa-copter platform with Carbon Fibre Landings Skids, it provides excellent stability above the ground level. It has a large ground clearance, which allows additional payload to be mounted underneath. It has dynamic balancing of the propellers, which offers ZERO vibration from the drone. It is made up of the following subsystem components and has dimensions of 550mm x 550mm x 280mm. It has a frame and landing gear with Jello Killer (a vibration free mount base).

Flight controller board - The DJI NAZA Lite with GPS Module (Setup for DEVO 7 transmitter): a system that supports remotely controlled navigation and can automatically stabilise the platform. The flight control board has a built in altitude sensor, Gyroscopes, Accelerometers, Barometer, Signal transmitter and Advanced Algorithm for positioning and stability. This is the brain that guards the Robotic drone to maintain its stability in the air

Autopilot: a system which combined with programmable image acquisition allows flights to be pre-programmed with already defined waypoints, a global positioning system (GPS), navigation-grade GPS receivers, barometers, and magnetic compass, cameras, light detection and ranging (LIDAR) technology to navigate through the environment and be able to adjust to unforeseen obstacles and situations in the habitat without human intervention. Navigation Systems:- the navigation system uses a GPS module and an Integrated UAV Navigation System Based on Aerial Image Matching. Integrated UAV Navigation System Based on Aerial Image Matching is a vision based navigation system, which integrates inertial sensors, visual odometer and registration of a UAV on-board video to a given geo- referenced aerial image, with the purpose to provide functional position information from aerial imagery even when the UAV is flying at low altitude (Gianpaolo et al., 2007). We decided that the ARDMS system should use this combination on the Robotic drone because of the possibility of GPS signal interruption or failure. If the GPS signal for some reason becomes unavailable or corrupted, the state estimation solution provided by the inertial navigation system (INS) alone drifts in time and may be unusable after a few seconds

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(especially for small-size UAVs, which uses low-cost INS). Multi-path reflections sometimes may cause the GPS signal to become irregular when operating close to obstacles. GPS is quite vulnerable to jamming (especially for a GPS operating on civilian frequencies). Therefore UAVs, which rely blindly on a GPS signal alone are quite vulnerable to malicious actions (Barber et al., 2006), (Duranti et al., 2004).

Propeller: Carbon Fibre Propeller (Clockwise and Counter Clockwise) and 2212 Brushless Motor, Tarot T-2D Brushless motor Gimbal has (Gyroscope built-in)

Power: The ARDMS system components are powered by Rechargeable Batteries

Cameras: there is a lot of on-going research work on the best lightest airborne digital camera system to use on UAVs. (IGI, 2007) disclosed the availability of a 5 kg DigiCAM-H39 multispectral camera systems with a CIR option and Tetracam's have released a 1.8 kg multichannel Camera MCA4 and 500 g ADC2. The 500 g ADC2 camera appears to be very stable for all operations based on the UAV specification but the disadvantage is the endurance and the quoted interval of not more than 12 seconds between two individual images. This camera type will only allow stationary image acquisition and not video streams. To satisfy the goal of this work a GoPro 3 Camera is used because it provides crystal clear 1080p@60fps video, 5.8 GHz FPV video transmitter system, it also provides a high quality single shot mode. GoPro 3 Camera frame (AnDMK-301) has a weight (battery +GoPro) that will not exceed 1.5kg and Storm SD-8 Brushless Camera motor Gimbal and Storm 20A ESC. Digital Transmitter:- It has a 2.4Ghz digital transmitter Walkera Devention 7 (or we call it DEVO 7), which offers longer transmission distance, less interference, more stable radio transmission and less legal issues, high performance and low cost. DEVO 7 is a 7-Channel 2.4Ghz DSSS Transmitter, which carries all the basic features that are needed for any 6- Channel aircraft, Throttle and Pitch curve, 3 flight modes (Normal, IDLE 1, IDLE 2), Dual Rate (DR) and EXP settings, Servo reverse, Swashplate mode and Gyro sensitivity. This transmitter has the following specification, ARM micro computer system as the encoder; 2.4Ghz（DSSS）

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operational frequency; -5dBm~20dBm Output power; 1.2VX8 NiCad or 1.5VX8 AA dry batteries and Current Drain: ≤170mA and a suitable Laptop for field work.

Communication - The transmission medium is at radio frequency at a distance between 100m to 10 km, with flexible transmission data rates of (62 kbps to 744 kbps) (Agogino et al., 2012). The communication link between the sub-systems is done via Wi-Fi and cellular network.

Integration and Test- the ARDMS system is a complex assembly deployed into a complex environment (pest habitats). Therefore all the multiple sub-systems are designed and developed independently before being integrated into a single entity, and a remote control system is used to manipulate and control the system’s operation. Significant emphasis is placed on the UAV weight, size and power management to fulfill the goals of the system.