DESIGN AND FABRICATION OF UNMANNED AERIAL VEHICLE FOR MONITORING OF OIL AND GAS PLANT

An Unmanned Aerial Vehicle or UAV is a vehicle that can fly with
minimal intervention. This project involves in designing and integrating UAV
technologies into a prototype that stabilizes itself while navigating in the harsh
conditions of oil and gas plant. The project does not use existing commercial
UAVs and flight controller board in the market. A self-fabricated prototype of
UAV is built from scratch. The prototype consists of a structure made of
aluminum and four brushless DC motor to provide lift-off and maneuver the
flight motion. The controls is embedded in a microcontroller and is equipped
with electronic speed controllers to drive the motor, sensors such as gyroscopes
and accelerometers to give orientation feedback and uses wireless
communications via Xbee modules. The microcontroller receives command from
a personal computer via the Xbee modules. A Graphical User Interface (GUI) is
developed in software called Processing for monitoring and maneuvering
purposes. For the chassis, it is modeled using Autodesk Inventor software to
ensure design is applicable. The expected outcome of this project is a complete
prototype that can be controlled from a personal computer (PC).