Graduation project of computer engineering
With the rapid development of technology in recent years, the size of computer com- ponents has become very small, and these components have become quite reachable figures as the production costs have decreased. Thanks to these developments, some of the devices that were supposed to be used only for military purposes in advance can now be sold for personal use. Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) can be given as an ex- ample for that kind of devices. Today, almost all of the technology stores in the world have UAVs offered for sale. There have been many developments on the software side as well as improvements on the hardware side. Developing UAV projects carried out large corporations as open source code and sharing these codes with everyone, people who want to have information about autonomous systems and work on this field have gained access to similar work. Nowadays, UAVs are being used instead of niches that are based on human power or made with large and complex tools. For example, UAVs can be used on search and rescue tasks after natural disasters such as earthquake, fire or flood. UAVs can quickly scan the area and can have access to victims of natural disasters. Additionally UAVs are suitable for optimization tasks such as logistic. Using UAVs on optimization of transportation can decrease the time, energy and cost of the tasks. Usage of the UAVs have some critical problems and bottlenecks. The area scanned with the UAVs should be done as soon as possible and with as high accuracy as pos- sible. For this purpose, this task has been to be conducted with multiple UAVs, but fulfilling this task with multiple UAVs creates a bottleneck on the communication chan- nels. In order to perform such a task with more than one UAV, communication both between the UAVs and between the UAVs and the ground station must be safe and secure. If communication between UAVs and ground station is lost, the UAVs stop their tasks for security and land on a safe area by following predetermined protocols. This project is to solve the problem of communication between the intended UAVs using centralized or decentralized communication techniques used in combination. As a proof of concept, it is aimed to complete the tasks of two UAVs scanning the area by establishing communication with both the ground station and each other.At the beginning of the mission, the field information determined by the ground sta- tion is sent to both UAVs. The paths that the UAVs follow in the designated area are transferred to the UAVs in a graph-based data structure. Then the UAVs start to conduct their duties. The UAVs mark to indicate that this point has been reached when the target points are reached. If the UAVs are in communication with the ground station, they transmit information about the points they reach to the ground station. In addition, the UAVs transmit this information amongst themselves in the range re- quired for communication on the map. In this case, the UAVs can communicate with each other and determine which areas are scanned. When two UAVs complete their tasks, they transfer the acquired information to each other and become ready for the next relative. Field scanning task can be done by using different algorithms. The three primary methods used in the project and the variations of these methods will be used. In these three methods, the selection of routes to be followed by UAVs is made differently. The first method, the zigzag method, is performed by linear paths separated horizontally or vertically. In the second method, the spiral method, the area to be scanned is to be made by dividing it into the interior and gradually decreasing areas. With this method, when the UAV arrives at the middle point of the area, which begins to scan from an outside edge of the area, it will complete its mission. The third method will be done by randomly selecting the route that the UAV will follow from the point closest to the position of the UAV. In this way, if all the points around the UAV are travelling, the mission of the UAV will be terminated. In the testing phase of the project performance of the algorithms are compared us- ing two UAVs and using the single UAV. Performance criteria of different test cases are determined using area coverage information, time cost of the searching operation and energy consumption of the UAVs.
You can access the complete thesis from the link below. https://drive.google.com/open?id=1D_qJWrc4-dxfKhsa8sA1u34HESsKv3wk