By: Daniel Bluman, Christopher Kedmenec, Kevin Mittler & Jervais Thomas
Adviser: Dr. A. Deese
The objective of the Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicle project is to be capable of an autonomous rapid first response to a security risk. The UAV will independently maneuver to a predefined GPS coordinate of an intruder. It will then recognize and follow the intruder while relaying visual information and telemetric data to a base station. The UAV has a quadrotor design with a lightweight frame, a lithium-polymer battery, four motors and propellers, a PIC microcontroller, several attitude and object avoidance sensors, and a wireless transceiver for communication. It also has a camera paired with a cutting-edge processor dedicated to the computer vision subsystem for human recognition. The PIC controls all motor functions in real time based on data received from the computer vision system and all sensors. MATLAB Simulink simulations were used to test and optimize the performance of the flight control and navigation systems.