Drop and Recovery of Sensor Nodes Using UAVs

Abstract

The goal of this project is to make a system able of executing drop and recovery of sensor nodes at sea by the use of UAVs.The sensor node will be a lightweight packet that can contain different sensors depending on the mission. These sensor nodes will be dropped into the sea where they will float on the surface. Examples of use for the sensor nodes can be to log temperature, currents, salinity or water quality. Hence they can be very useful in for instance climate research or for detectingoil spills.This project is a continuation of a project executed by the author [Voldsund, 2013] where a drop and recovery mechanism to be mounted on a multicopter UAV was developed. The mechanism has been further developed in this project and integrated to an UAV. A control structure for the UAV has been developed and tested using simulator, software-in-the-loop tests and tests in the lab. Simulations and software-in-the-loop tests showed that the control structure was able to execute drop and recovery. But the needed accuracy for recovery of sensor nodes using the mentioned mechanism was not achieved in the lab tests.Measures that could be taken to enhance accuracy to make the system able to conduct dropand recovery of sensor nodes are discussed in this thesis