Conception d’une infrastucture de pilotage robuste de drones quadricoptères avec intégration d'avionique type G-1000 pour des missions stratégiques éloignées

Abstract

This master thesis studies the design of quadcopter drones that can be piloted robustly and safely at very long distances via commercial avionics. Today UAVs are everywhere and their use in industrial and private sectors is starting to happen. The problem is that current drones are not safe enough to allow their integration into civilian airspace and in urban areas, especially if the cockpit is remote. The purpose of this research is to develop methods to enable this insertion of UAVs in everyday life. To make it possible, a new generation UAV prototype will be developed, it will include a powerful onboard computer capable of integrating innovative communication tools in the drones field. To achieve the safety and robustness objectives of the aircraft, we will develop our own navigation and collision detection algorithms. The entire system will be supervised by a software architecture which is able to transmit flight information to a certified G1000 avionics station in the ground, recreating very closely the control stations used by military personnel. The different hardware and software developments implemented have been tested both, outdoors and in a flight cage. The results demonstrate positioning accuracy up to one meter independently of the region of the globe where the drone performs. Although the capabilities of the current setup are limited to manual control, basic navigation and avoidance of other UAVs, the system in place provides a very interesting modularity. Future improvements in terms of piloting technologies over long distances and cooperative flight between UAVs will not require modification of the existing software kernel, allowing a constant evolution of the drone’s capabilities. This work opens the door to new applications by incorporating modern certified avionics tools in the use of new civilian drones. The developed and implemented concepts in this paper offer tools to significantly increase the security and robustness of future UAV missions of all types and in all kind of situations. The UAVs prototypes produced by this research will accelerate the integration of UAVs in civil airspace to support its expected increase in day-today operations for the coming years.

Date	26 Jun 2015
Original language	French
Awarding Institution	École de technologie supérieure
Supervisor	René Jr. Landry (Supervisor) & Jean-François Boland (Co-supervisor)