Vision based autonomous navigation of unmanned aerial vehicle uav for wireless power charging

Abstract

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV)/Quadcopters are widely used in defence, agriculture, medicine, and various other fields for surveillance and reconnaissance purposes. Even though Quadcopters are quite useful, battery power restrictions limit the prolonged flight duration, and they require battery recharge quite frequently. To overcome these shortcomings, autonomous charging of the Quadcopter is essential for an uninterrupted flight. Some researchers have proposed contact-based charging points for autonomous recharging for a drone. But the problem of this technique is that the perfect alignment of the electrodes to the charging point is required for the recharging of the UAV battery which inturn needs human intervention. Wireless charging of Quadcopters is thus a desired and efficient method to address this challenge. Hence this research explores the concept of wireless charging of a Quad copter s battery using vision-based navigation to enable continuous surveillance. For getting the battery charged wirelessly, Quadcopter has to navigate to a charging-pad using Global position navigation system (GPS) coordinates. However, precise landing may not be achieved due to inaccuracy in GPS method of landing. Vision-based guidance addresses this challenge by providing more accurate information about the charging pad s position, helping the vehicle move towards the charging-pad and get charged wirelessly. The endurance can be enhanced by providing many charging points around the surveillance area. The main objectives of this thesis are: To identify the nearest charging pad using Haversine distance function such that Quadcopter can reach the nearest charging pad quickly.To develop a vision-based centroid detection algorithm in an image processing computer (Raspberry pi B+) to detect the charging pad and move Quadcopter towards charging pad autonomously. To design and development of wireless power charging by using inductive coupling to recharge the battery of Quadcopter. To implement super capacitors in the charging circuit in order to make the charging cycle efficient. newline newline newline newline