Automatic accident prevention system for RPA (drones)

Abstract

Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPAs), commonly known as Drones and Vants, can be used for recreational or commercial purposes. In this latter case, they have been frequently used in filming, photography, 3D rendering, search and rescue of people, among others. Because of this vast diversity, there has been a considerable increase in accidents involving RPAs in urban and rural areas, which is why MAPSKY develops a new accident prevention system for RPAs with automatic parachute activation. Most RPAs, usually intended for commercial purposes, do not have this technology. In addition, the market values for the acquisition of a parachute system vary from R $ 2,300.00 to R $ 13,247.00, which makes it unreachable in the Brazilian scenario. It should be noted that the aforesaid lower value is intended only for the sensor and the container with the parachute is not included. With the automatic system of accident prevention developed by MAPSKY it will be possible to avoid the fall of the RPA in flight, preventing the damage, since the sensors contained in it detect beforehand the damaging event triggering the parachute. This allows the safe landing of the aircraft. In this way, this project aims to develop and implement the analysis of its technical feasibility, in order to avoid aerial accidents, as well as personal injuries, structural damages in the RPA and material damages to third parties, making the aircraft flight remotely piloted more reliable and secure. Currently in Brazil, there are parachutes in some RPAs, which are triggered manually, or preprogrammed only at the end of a mission. There is no automatic triggering technology in the country to prevent accidents, which will be implemented in an innovative way by MAPSKY. In this context, it should be noted that safety measures are already being used by RPA manufacturers in Brazil and worldwide, with equipment or manual drive system, and it is true that in the long term the adoption of safety systems, such as parachute or propeller protection, will be well regarded by the regulators themselves, and the automated drive system, which is the object of this project, will be more widely accepted in the domestic market. In this way, this research and innovation project has as main point to develop a circuit board to understand the risk situations during the flight of the RPA and thus to trigger the security system of the device, avoiding further damage. The circuit board to be developed will contain electronic components and sensors that together will analyze the behavior of the RPA. The microcontroller will be the core of the safety system that will have all the computational part developed for the integration of these components and thus determine the axis acceleration parameters in relation to the falling force of gravity. To verify the operation of the circuit board, tests will be carried out with the oscilloscope and multimeter, as well as the variation of vertical acceleration on the bench. With all procedures performed successfully, the parachute container should be released by the servo motor which will be connected to the circuit board previously described. With the execution of these tests and the good functioning of the system, the project will reach the goals making it viable for the submission of PIPE / FAPESP Phase 2. (AU)