Introduction

Balinsasayao Twin Lakes Natural Park is a mountainous natural park of 80km2 in the Cuernos de Negros mountain chain between Dumaguete, Sibulan, Valencia and San Jose. It contains one of the last stretches of primary forest in Negros, and the Philippines. Economical interests and illegal deforestation put pressure on this last stretch of highland tropical forest. To put a halt to the illegal deforestation, the PAMB (protected area management board) of the park wants to more tightly monitor the stretches of forest. Due to the size of the park and limited personnel availability, it takes a lot of time to monitor the whole park on foot. To aid their monitoring they looked at the possibilities of a technological solution to aid the monitoring. At a presentation of the PAMB, the Nightowl Technology Incubator and Hackerspace was asked if UAV's (drones) could be an option in monitoring this area. Due to the limitations of flight time (around 20min) and signal range (3km) of the remote controller, regular drones are of limited use for this purpose. If autonomous UAV's on the other hand could monitor this area much better, which would greatly improve the monitoring capabilities. Commercial autonomous UAV's are cost-prohibitive for this application though. If we could device a low-cost, DYI, open source autonomous UAV system, we could use it to assist both the Balinsasayao National Park but it could also be a very interesting project for other areas.

This is pushing the boundaries of drones though, and will require many different technologies to be applied and combined and possibly developed. As such it is an ambitious project that requires a lot of Research and Development, and the outcome is far from certain. The Nightowl Incubator and Maker-Space, where ambitious students and makers are available, is the ideal location to take on this long-term project, and tackle the problems one by one. But without both financial and practical aid this will be a difficult task. Financial aid needs to be found form DENR, DOST and other government agencies, and partnerships need to be found with other groups within and outside universities to get the best people together.

Scope

This project will be purely an R&D/prototyping project. The goal is to investigate whether it is possible to develop a UAV system with a limited budget and technical resources, and by using as many existing open-source components as possible, that is able to operate without human intervention or purely remote (km's away) human intervention. There are many aspects and requirements to this project that are all ambitious. Some of the aspects of the project might have the outcome that more work is needed, or the required technology doesn't exist yet or is still cost-prohibitive, and therefore the application as described in the introduction is not possible at this time. For the components that are deemed feasible, the project will try to develop and test the components, and document the whole process for use by others. All components and software that need to be developed within this project will be made available under an open-source license, and will be published online, available to the general public.

Design and requirements

The final goal of this project is to have a UAV that can operate without human intervention in monitoring deforestation in a relatively large area. To accomplish this, base stations are necessary where the drone can land, charge, receive commands, and shelter from bad weather. When commanded by a central management application, the drone will take off and independently fly to another charging station, while taking pictures. The charging stations need to be able to communicate between eachother and the drone to receive and send commands, which would be possible using a wireless mesh. A central controlling computer needs to be able to send commands to the drone and charging stations to plan the route of the drone, taking weather conditions, flight time and monitoring progress into account.

The UAV

Be able to fly between base stations of a fixed, known location, in an area without obstructions above a minimum altitude

Land at the base stations accurately enough to allow wireless charging

Record photo or video data along the way

Possibly transfer the data at the base stations after landing

Possibly receive instructions from the base stations and/or a central management tool/person for the next flight

The UAV should be easily locatable in case of a crash or other problem

It should be able to charge it batteries wirelessly

Base station

Provide electricity to charge the drone batteries (solar?)

Be able to charge the drone batteries wirelessly

Provide a dry and shaded area for the drone to recharge, but also land and take-off accurately

Optional: through a mesh network or cellphone reception connect to a centralized management application on the internet

Optional: Communicate simple instructions to the drone for route planning

Central management application

The necessity of this application is not certain and depends on the possibilities of the drone and it's base station. Optional requirements could be:

Monitor weather conditions to evaluate of they are suitable for the UAV to fly

Plan the route of the UAV

Provide a log of the activities and different metrics of the UAV and it's base stations

Monitor the location of the UAV in case of problems

Provide information on the health of the UAV and base stations and notify a user if required

Project Milestones

Milestone	Title	Comments	Due date
1.	Finalize current proposal
2.	Get funding commitments
3.	UAV controller circuitry complete
4.	UAV can receive instructions through wire to fly to GPS coordinates
5.	Hook-up a camera system to the drone
6.	Base station design complete
7.	UAV can receive commands wirelesly
8.	UAV can receive instrcutions from a central computer
9.	UAV can land accurately to 20cm
10.	UAV can charge wirelessly

Work breakdown

Milestones

Finalize current proposal

Finalize design requirements for first proposal

Research combination of flight time, range and wireless signal strength on 2.4GHz (possibly with nrf24L+)

Research accurate landing (laser, infrared, etc)

Research drone controllers, IMU and GPS communication

Research routing software (mission planning/operation)

Research altitude navigation for landing and sensors

Research flight duration

Get a list of materials

Finalize milestone list

Design

Water proof for water crash?

Find back in case of problems (sensor/signal)

Wireless communication throughout flight to relocate it later on?

Locating the drone after crash

The NRF24L01+ with antenna, PA and LNA (power amplifier and low noise amplifier) can have around 300-1000m range, we could use that to transmit the location of the drone in flight, so we know where it goes down. Disadvantage is it's bulk and probably larger battery requirement (and thus weight). We could also use it to keep sending the drone GPS coordinates out on 2.4GHz from the GPS module. See http://www.elecfreaks.com/wiki/index.php?title=2.4G_Wireless_nRF24L01p_with_PA_and_LNA. The price is good at around $15 for two modules. See http://www.ebay.com/itm/2-x-NRF24L01-PA-LNA-SMA-Antenna-Wireless-Transceiver-communication-module-2-4G-/111853679356

Loc8tor lite is a tag with locator that can find the tag back accurately from 122m: http://www.loc8tor.com/everyday/loc8tor-lite.html/ This would be good for the last little stretch in a forest, but costs $90.

A complete, but expensive solution is from the Marco Polo locator at close to $300. http://eurekaproducts.com/product-category/buyrcmodelsystems/

A DIY telemetry kit with around 700m range (open field) is possible for around $20 as well. This seems a very good option right now. See https://quadmeup.com/diy-wireless-telemetry-link-for-uav/

Precision landing

There is an irlock module available for precision landing. It is an IR sensor that centers the drone over a location. It is compatible with the dronecode/ardupilot suite of software. See http://ardupilot.org/copter/docs/precision-landing-with-irlock.html

Materials

Item	Link	Quantity	Price (USD)	Total
Drone platform	1	0	0
Drone locator (NRF24L01+ with PA and LNA)	http://www.elecfreaks.com/wiki/index.php?title=2.4G_Wireless_nRF24L01p_with_PA_and_LNA	2	15	30
Pixhawk Drone controllerboard/IMU with GPS	https://www.unmannedtechshop.co.uk/unmanned-pixhawk-autopilot-kit/	1	240	240
HC-12 Wireless Serial Port Module	http://www.ebay.com/itm/433Mhz-HC-12-SI4463-Wireless-Serial-Port-Module-1000m-Replace-Bluetooth-Module-/131167660092	2	20	40
Go-pro camera	1	0	0
Li(ion/po) Batteries 3500mAh	6	8	48
Total	358

Interesting links

https://www.dronecode.org/dronecode-software-platform

http://elinux.org/images/4/49/Autonomous_Navigation_for_an_OMAP4_Nano-Drone.pdf

http://px4.io/

https://pixhawk.org/

https://store.3dr.com/products/3dr-pixhawk

http://ardupilot.org/copter/index.html

http://www.auav.co/category-s/100.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unmanned_aerial_vehicle#Autonomy

Wireless charging for the Base stations: http://www.instructables.com/id/Wireless-Electricity-Transmission-Simple-things-re/

http://diydrones.com/

http://copter.ardupilot.org/ardupilot/index.html

http://ardupilot.org/ardupilot/index.html

https://docs.google.com/document/d/10MgFocP4nxi_uPrZQDXdhGncASnwSeg1XHiWnK9IcvI/edit?usp=sharing