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dc.contributor.authorObeti, Silivio
dc.date.accessioned2021-02-19T08:15:52Z
dc.date.available2021-02-19T08:15:52Z
dc.date.issued2019-09
dc.identifier.citationObeti, S. (2019). Design of Flight Control System for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle For Urban air quality Monitoring in Uganda. Unpublished undergraduate dissertation. Makerere University: Kampala, Ugandaen_US
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12281/8880
dc.descriptionAir pollution is contamination of indoor or outdoor air by a range of gasses and solids that modify its natural characteristics [1]. Key health-harmful pollutants include particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM10), carbon monoxide, ozone, carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides. Air quality monitoring is the systematic, long-term assessment of pollutant levels by measuring the quantity and types of certain pollutants in the surrounding, outdoor air [2]. The Centre for Research in Transportation Technologies (CRTT) aims at developing Unmanned Aerial Vehicle to be used for urban air quality monitoring in Uganda. Air pollution is extremely complex to evaluate. Pollution is mostly caused by human activities, so it is logical to measure it only in urban settings [3]. Air Pollution in Uganda is mainly brought up by rapid urbanization and population growth in urban areas. Uganda’s dirty air is characterized by smoke from car exhaust, industry, residential trash burning, road dust and soot from indoor biomass-fuelled cook stoves for cooking. With so much air pollution in Kampala, the Air Visual 2018 World Air Quality Report named Kampala as having the second-worst air in Africa [4]. This atmospheric pollution affects human health and also reduces agriculture yields, visibility, sunlight at ground level and increases atmospheric heating as well. These impacts high light the need for continuous air quality assessment [5]. The evaluation of air quality and pollution in Uganda is being done traditionally with ground- based monitors with a few privately installed air quality monitoring networks around Kampala. These include Air Visual Node monitors and a real-time PM2.5 monitor on the U.S. Embassy compound in Kampala [4]. However, these methods are static and cannot cover a significant part of an area as they are only fixed to specific places such as the U.S. Embassy compound, thus having inaccurate mean values during extrapolation since the data is limited. With the use of a UAV to monitor the urban air quality, the quality of the air can be studied at different heights both horizontally and vertically thus increasing the air quality monitoring coverage and having more data hence precise estimates. The project is divided into three Engineering disciplines that is; Electrical Engineering, Mechanical engineering and Computer Engineering. The Computer Engineering team is to design and implement a ground control station of the UAV while the Mechanical team designs the structure of the UAV. The flight control system of the UAV is to be designed by the Electrical Engineering team. The Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) control system enables the UAV to fulfil its flight mission and failure of the flight control system could result in an unsuccessful mission or loss of the UAV. Therefore, a reliable and accurate flight control system is required to provide better dynamical characteristics and steady precision of the UAV during its flight missions. However, the control systems that are available are either too expensive or are geared towards specific hardware thus minimizing the flexibility on the choice of components for the UAV. Therefore, there is a need for designing a flight control system that accounts for all the parameters of the proposed UAV ensuring compatibility with the UAV components and is reliable under all possible flight conditionsen_US
dc.description.abstractThe project titled design of the flight control system of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) for urban air quality monitoring in Uganda was a multi-disciplinary project under the Centre for Research in Transportation Technologies at College of Engineering Design Art and Technology of Makerere University. The project was done by three engineering disciplines that is mechanical team who designed the frame of UAV, computer team who designed the control for analysing the air quality and storing in the database and electrical team responsible for designing flight control system of UAV. The project activities started by reviewing literature of UAV dynamics and various control techniques employed for designing flight control systems of UAV such as linear control method, non-linear control method and adaptive control method, where we employed linear control method for implementation of flight control system due to its reliability and simplicity. Flight control system design was carried out using SIMULINK in MATLAB. PID controllers were employed for optimizing roll, pitch and yaw motions of UAV. Various components for designing UAV flight control system include the transmitter, receiver, sensor module, Radio frequency module, motors and propellers, batteries and speed controllers were selected and a prototype was developed for testing the flight control system. The transmitter and receiver are programmed using C++ in Arduino and the codes were deployed on to microcontroller for testing the flight control system. The optimised result of PID from SIMULINK simulation for flight control system gave shorter resting time for a response to a step input. The control system was then deployed on to the hard ware for testing, all components responded accurately well with the code and UAV is operating as required. The list of the selected components was submitted to CRTT management for procurement.en_US
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.subjectFlight Control Systemen_US
dc.subjectUnmanned Aerial Vehicleen_US
dc.subjectUrban air quality Monitoringen_US
dc.titleDesign of Flight Control System for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle For Urban air quality Monitoring in Ugandaen_US
dc.typeThesisen_US


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