Final Year Project :Courier Based Quadcopter

              Drone industry is developing year by year with different innovation and application. In the conjunction of e-commerce industry and fast pace operation industry, delivery of items is very crucial to be effective and efficient. The main problem of delivery is the barrier of transportation on land or sea. With the limited choices of transportation, drone can be one of the best solution for courier service.

                 So, the purpose of this project is to design a scale down courier based quadcopter that improve the efficiency of their delivery services and solve logistics problems. Therefore, without a driver or pilot, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) is an ideal solution as a carrier for online shopping businesses. However, without the support of weight by the land, the methodology of the project shall start from design of courier based quadcopter that is capable to carry payloads. From selecting hardware to applying software, the designed drone must produce more thrust for the whole delivery system. The expected results should include flying distance of at least 10 m and flying height of 2 m. Payloads in this study is within 1 kg to carry out experiment and investigate how it affect the throttle of a quadcopter. In order to create impact in logistics field, foundation of right hardware and software can contribute tofuture innovation like an autonomous drone for items delivery.  

               Methodology to start the hardware installation is by assembling the frame. Connectors are soldered and then we deal with the flight controller connections. Motor are connected to the flight controller and directions is tested whether is clockwise or counter-clockwise. Electronic speed controller is then soldered with motor and lastly connected to power distribution board. Battery is then attached to the body and used to start the whole system through wire. Then software calibrations were done and control the flight mode.

            Figure 1.0 :Flow of Methodology in hardware

                     When the objective of this final year project is focused, experiment on new hardware was being carried out, collecting data based on observation of quadcopter behavior. An experiment was conducted to study the effect of payloads on quadcopter. First, a length of 2 m height pipe is used as a reference height. Payloads are hooked at the bottom part of the quadcopter by increasing its weight. After the payloads are hooked, time taken for the quadcopter to throttle until it exceed the 2 m height was recorded. The payloads increases based on the increase of wheel that the quadcopter carry as shown in Figure 2.0. The result and data were collected in Table 4.9 to be plotted in Graph 3.0 to study the relationship and effect of payloads on quadcopter.

        Figure2.0: Experiment to study the effect of payload on quadcopter

                                  Graph 3.0: Throttle of Quadcopter VS Payloads

            From the results, this project obtained the suitability of a hardware according to our proposed objectives. Racing hardware must be eliminated and replaced with lower KV value motor and higher current ESC and bigger propeller. Building of new prototype with new frame will restructure the whole project. To summarize this chapter, the results we get can be taken to make inferences and produce more projects that can lift up more payloads.