Autonomous UAV System Development for Payload Dropping Mission

Abstract — In this paper, power and autonomous system in UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) for payload dropping mission will be presented. The UAV consists of two main parts, airframe and the avionics system. There are two important subsystems of avionics system which will be discussed, power system and autonomous system. There are three Li-Poly batteries applied in this system to power the autonomous system. The autonomous system consists of an Ardupilot Mega v2.4.2 board (autonomous board), a GPS (Global Positioning System) sensor, attitude sensors, ESC (Electronic Speed Controller), servos, a brushless motor, a camera, a data transmitter, an Audio/Video transmitter, and also a Radio RC receiver. This UAV was designed to participate Kontes Robot Terbang Indonesia 2013 (Indonesia Aerial Robot Contest 2013), payload dropping category, at Institut Teknologi Bandung, Indonesia. In this competition, provided a mission which the UAV has to drop payloads in some target points which is only known when UAV in the flight time. The UAV has to fly autonomously point-to-point while it also search the true point to drop the payloads by camera capturing. By integrating UAV’s system with GCS (Ground Control System), the true point will be known by the operators in the ground control station and the mission can be accomplished. Keywords —airframe, power system, autonomous system, Kontes Robot Terbang Indonesia 2013 , dropping payloads.