Optimization of an Ultralight Autonomous Drone for Service Robotics

Drone industry is constantly growing and evolving in time. Federal Aviation Administration Aerospace Forecast predicts that drone market volume will be about three times the actual one in 2023. This because UAVs are becoming more and more fundamental in the most various application like agriculture, emergency response, urban planning and maintenance, entertainment, security and so many others. For all these tasks, in the near future a large number of drones will fly over our heads. From here the necessity to build safe, lightweight and autonomous UAV for the drones colonization of the very lower part of the Earth atmosphere. Furthermore EASA fixed to 250 grams the limit of the C0 open UAS, category with quite few restrictions to fly. PIC4SeR (PoliTO Interdepartmental Centre for Service Robotics) wants to keep up with this incoming demand and enter in this market, deciding to invest time and resources on the optimization of an ultralight autonomous drone, with the future intention of full customization with the needs of the end-user for different and specific cases such as service robotics, smart city search and rescue and precision agriculture that are the four fields of action of the interdepartmental centre where this thesis took place. With the base of the first flying prototype and a deep research on the State Of Art literature on drones, in particular lightweight and autonomous ones, the work done for this thesis was to optimize the drone with special attention to hardware and weight, changing the usual construction method from carbon fiber frame to a newborn design using Printed Circuit Board and 3D printed plastic, and finally to make it intelligent and usable by non-expert users with basic knowledge. The improvements made and overall stability of the new prototype are satisfactory, a solid point from which to develop many ultralight drone based technologies.