Design and Development of an Aircraft Type Multi-functional Autonomous Drone

This paper demonstrates the design and development of an autonomous aircraft type drone for dynamic applications including surveillance, disaster management, and military applications, especially, target practice of missiles. The drone is capable of flying at a maximum speed of 90 kilometer/hour, where the maximum altitude is approximately 1 kilometer. Because of the autopilot and global positioning system, installed with the drone, the flight of the multi-functional drone is autonomously controllable from the ground control station. The long endurance drone is designed for uninterrupted flying of ~ 30 minutes at an altitude of 300 meters. The high definition camera of the drone transmits live video stream of any projected area to the ground control station using the video transmitter. The drone automatically returns to the ground control station when its battery voltage reduces down to 21.6 volts or the communication with the ground control station is lost. Most importantly, the drone is able to carry ~ 4.6 kilograms of payload along with it.