Design and implementation of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) for image capture in enterprise farming

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), also known as drone is one of the most interesting emerging technologies with a wide range of applications including agriculture, surveillance, security, search and rescue, mapping, farmland surveying, and wildlife conservation, among others. In Nigeria, UAV is gaining popularity in applications such as in social functions for taking both moving and static pictures, military and security, mapping and agriculture. In this work, an UAV was designed, some components produced by 3D printing, coupled and tested with certain level of local content in view. The UAV is a quadcopter equipped with a camera for real-time image capture of farmlands and it can perform autonomous missions by using global positioning system (GPS) waypoints. The weight of the quadcopter was approximately calculated and hence the electrical and mechanical components selected using a standard empirical design table. The thrust to weight ratio was set at 2:1. Autodesk Maya and Inventor software were used to design the frame in two parts: the frame arms on which the propellers are mounted and the central connecting part that links the four arms. The arms are made up of aluminum square pipes while the central connecting part for the arms was printed with a 3D printer (200 x 200 x 200 Wanhao duplicator i3) using PolyEthylene Terephthalate Glycol (PETG) Filament material of 1.75mm standard gauge. Material selection was based on material strength, cost and availability. NCH Debut video and image capture software was used to record live feeds from the UAV onboard camera. Functionality tests for lift, stability, yaw, roll, pitch, loiter, auto landing, return to launch, flight time, altitude/signal, auto mission using GPS waypoints were carried out with the completed UAV on a less windy day to avoid the influence of wind. It was generally observed that the UAV successfully took off the ground, gained stability, flew to over 100m height, captured aerial photographs of the land below it while on flight at the required height and landed safely. Cost saving advantage of 45.28% was achieved when compared to imported equivalent types.