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HEIFU - Hexa Exterior Intelligent Flying Unit

2021; Springer Science+Business Media; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1007/978-3-030-83906-2_7

1611-3349

Dário Pedro, P. Lousã, Álvaro Ramos, João P. Matos-Carvalho, Fábio Azevedo, Luís Miguel Campos,

UAV Applications and Optimization

The number of applications for which UAVs can be used is growing rapidly, either because they can perform more efficiently than traditional methods or because they can be a good alternative when there are risks involved. Indeed, as a result of some incidents that could have resulted in disastrous accidents, the European Union is tightening regulations regarding the use of drones and requiring formal training as well as logged missions from those who want to use UAVs above a certain MTOW for whatever reason, whether domestic or professional. If the application requires BVLOS flights, the limitations become much more stringent. In this article HEIFU is presented, a class 3 hexacopter UAV that can carry up to an 8 kg payload (having a MTOW of 15 kg) and a wingspan of 1.5 m, targeting applications that could profit much from having fully automated missions. Inside, an AI engine was installed so that the UAV could be trained to fly, following a pre-determined mission, but also detect obstacles in real-time so that it can accomplish its task without incidents. A sample use case of HEIFU is also presented, facilitating the temporal replication of an autonomous mission for an agricultural application.