Overview

Integration Platform of Unmanned Aircraft Systems for Wireless Sensor Networks is a research project supported by Central Taiwan Science Park. In the past, the development of anti-disaster technology in Taiwan has been achieved by the construction of Internet of Things (IoT) infrastructure. Nevertheless, the transmission of wireless sensor networks is not always as effective in remote areas and rough terrain. Without 4G/3G infrastructure, sensor data collection requires cost of labors exposing to hazardous conditions. Our goal is to develop an interface between UAS and Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) to mitigate this problem.

The project is consist of four subsystems:

• Flight Control System
• Aerial Application System
• Wireless Sensor Transmission System
• Ground Power Supply & Real-time Image Transmission System

Flight Control System

Throguh real-time position estimator and GPS navigation, the UAV can locate itself to the exact coordination where WSN nodes are allocated

• Position Estimator: Adujust the pose of UAV to stablize the flight.
  • PX4 Flight Stack + Pixhawk-based FCU
• GPS Navigation

  • Integrated RTK(Real Time Kinematic)lib to reduce the error of GPS from metre to centermetre level

  • GPS signal is strengthen with the aid of Ground Plane

Aerial Application System

• Central Control Applications are modulized into ROS nodes to comunnicate with MAVROS during the flight control
• Trajectory Planning Informative Path Planning (IPP) problems was a subfields of research on developing efficient trajectory planning algorithm. We achieved this by using an enhanced the ACO(Ant Colony Optimization) scheme.
• Collision Avoidance
  • Wrapping functions into ROS node to handle the signal infomation
  • Kalman Flitering was added in order not to mislead the UAS with single noise

Wireless Sensor Transmission System:

• WEMS(Wireless Environmental Monitoring System): eqipped with an Temperature&Humidity Sensor, Optical Dust Sensor, and Realtime Clock The wireless transmission packet format is as below: The WEMS will have a self schedule until the UAV arrived and wake it up. A varification&retransmission system is devloped to ensure the integrity and correctness of transmitted data during the process.

Ground Power Supply & Real-time Image Transmission System

• Ground Power Supply System: aims to solve the incapability of long-time stagnation of UAS. By directing the supply of electricity to the UAS through power line, the UAS can stagnate in the sky for a longer period.

• Real-time Image Transmission System: built to transmit image data wirelessly to the ground station. In such manner, it enables operators to recognize in time whether unusual situation occurs and accomplishes the purpose of monitoring.

Project Members

Advisors: Prof. Yueh-Ming Huang, Dr. Ching-Ju Chen, Dr. 黃顯詔
Jong-Ting Cheng
Yung-Ching Shieh
Yu-Yun Chen
Jou-An Chen
Chih-Yu Chen

Demonstration

Slides on Slideshare

Publication

C.-J. Chen, J.-A. Chen, and Y.-M. Huang, “Intelligent Environmental Sensing with an Unmanned Aerial System in a Wireless Sensor Network.”, International Journal on Smart Sensing & Intelligent Systems, vol. 10, no. 3, 2017. (PDF)

Awards

Taiwan Representative in Research and Development Category, Asia Pacific ICT Alliance Awards 2016

The project achieved Taiwan representative in Research and Development category for Asia Pacific ICT Alliance Awards 2016. In the contest, I was the presenter of our team, demonstrating the capability of our project to international judges. The experience facilitates my research presenting skills from organizing the contents to vivid eye contacts and tones to grab audience’s attention. I met a judge from Singapore who was one of earliest developers of PX4 Flight Stack (He worked for the U.S. official at that time). He shared his opensource development experience with me. And he also talked about some consideration when he developed relevant functions. I learned a lot during the whole competition and gain much confident in developing UAV for the next generation.