Design and development of a quadcopter UAV for high-altitude operations in tropical monsoon rainforest climates: A case study in the hilly region of Assam
Allen Pinto
Abstract. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are aircraft that do not carry humans and rely on aerodynamic forces for lifting. These vehicles can be equipped with lethal or non-lethal payloads and remotely operated or automatically controlled. The following paper focuses on the extensive use of UAVs at higher altitudes and in tropical monsoon rainforest climates. To achieve this, the study area was selected for its hilly climate, as it is highly susceptible to flooding and other emergencies. In such situations’, unmanned vehicles are invaluable for providing emergency services. The proposed UAV design is a quadcopter featuring 4 motors for improved lift. The microprocessor used was Pixhawk 4 (PX4), which is a widely used and customizable device preferred by many researchers. The propellers utilize an NACA 4412 airfoil, a set of data which provides the necessary information for designing a UAV suitable for the hilly region’s conditions.
Keywords
Index Terms Assam, Hilly Region, UAV, Quadcopter, Pixhawk, Air Foil
Published online 3/1/2025, 12 pages
Copyright © 2025 by the author(s)
Published under license by Materials Research Forum LLC., Millersville PA, USA
Citation: Allen Pinto, Design and development of a quadcopter UAV for high-altitude operations in tropical monsoon rainforest climates: A case study in the hilly region of Assam, Materials Research Proceedings, Vol. 49, pp 296-307, 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.21741/9781644903438-30
The article was published as article 30 of the book Mechanical Engineering for Sustainable Development
Content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.
References
[1] Dhar, S. (2014). Socio-Economic and Demographic status of Assam: A comparative analysis of Assam with India. Population (crore), 31169272(121.102).
[2] Bora, N., Nath, A. J., & Das, A. K. (2013). Aboveground biomass and carbon stocks of tree species in tropical forests of Cacher District, Assam, Northeast India. International JInal of Ecology and Environmental Sciences, 39(2), 97-106.
[3] Pande, P. G. (1935). Acute amphistomiasis of cattle in Assam: a preliminary report. Indian JInal of Veterinary Science and Animal Husbandry, 5(4), 364-375.
[4] Van Den Eeckhaut, M., Poesen, J., Govers, G., Verstraeten, G., & Demoulin, A. (2007). Characteristics of the size distribution of recent and historical landslides in a populated hilly region. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 256(3-4), 588-603. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.epsl.2007.01.040
[5] Atwa, Y. M., El-Saadany, E. F., Salama, M. M. A., Seethapathy, R., Assam, M., & Conti, S. (2011). Adequacy evaluation of distribution system including wind/solar DG during different modes of operation. IEEE Transactions on Power systems, 26(4), 1945-1952. https://doi.org/10.1109/TPWRS.2011.2112783
[6] Hemen, S., Tripathi, A. K., Souravjyoti, B., & Devendra, K. (2010). Updated estimates of wild edible and threatened plants of Assam: a meta-analysis. International Journal of Botany, 6(4), 414-423. https://doi.org/10.3923/ijb.2010.414.423
[7] Bora, M., & Goswami, D. C. (2017). Water quality assessment in terms of water quality index (WQI): case study of the Kolong River, Assam, India. Applied Water Science, 7, 3125-3135. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13201-016-0451-y
[8] Fahlstrom, P. G., Gleason, T. J., & Sadraey, M. H. (2022). Introduction to UAV systems. John Wiley & Sons.
[9] Stöcker, C., Bennett, R., Nex, F., Gerke, M., & Zevenbergen, J. (2017). Review of the current state of UAV regulations. Remote sensing, 9(5), 459. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs9050459
[10] Khuwaja, A. A., Chen, Y., Zhao, N., Alouini, M. S., & Dobbins, P. (2018). A survey of channel modeling for UAV communications. IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, 20(4), 2804-2821. https://doi.org/10.1109/COMST.2018.2856587
[11] Tisdale, J., Kim, Z., & Hedrick, J. K. (2009). Autonomous UAV path planning and estimation. IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine, 16(2), 35-42. https://doi.org/10.1109/MRA.2009.932529
[12] Alzahrani, B., Oubbati, O. S., Barnawi, A., Atiquzzaman, M., & Alghazzawi, D. (2020). UAV assistance paradigm: State-of-the-art in applications and challenges. Journal of Network and Computer Applications, 166, 102706. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jnca.2020.102706
[13] Skorobogatov, G., Barrado, C., & Salamí, E. (2020). Multiple UAV systems: A survey. Unmanned Systems, 8(02), 149-169. https://doi.org/10.1142/S2301385020500090
[14] Amin, R., Aijun, L., & Shamshirband, S. (2016). A review of quadrotor UAV: control methodologies and performance evaluation. International Journal of Automation and Control, 10(2), 87-103. https://doi.org/10.1504/IJAAC.2016.076453
[15] Xu, J., Zeng, Y., & Zhang, R. (2018). UAV-enabled wireless power transfer: Trajectory design and energy optimization. IEEE transactions on wireless communications, 17(8), 5092-5106. https://doi.org/10.1109/TWC.2018.2838134
[16] Fotouhi, A., Qiang, H., Ding, M., Hassan, M., Giordano, L. G., Garcia-Rodriguez, A., & Yuan, J. (2019). Survey on UAV cellular communications: Practical aspects, standardization advancements, regulation, and security challenges. IEEE Communications surveys & tutorials, 21(4), 3417-3442. https://doi.org/10.1109/COMST.2019.2906228
[17] Xiang, H., & Tian, L. (2011). Development of a low-cost agricultural remote sensing system based on an autonomous unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). Biosystems engineering, 108(2), 174-190. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biosystemseng.2010.11.010
[18] Luukkonen, T. (2011). Modelling and control of quadcopter. Independent research project in applied mathematics, Espoo, 22(22).
[19] Musa, S. (2018). Techniques for quadcopter modeling and design: A review. Journal of unmanned system Technology, 5(3), 66-75.
[20] Wang, P., Man, Z., Cao, Z., Zheng, J., & Zhao, Y. (2016, November). Dynamics modelling and linear control of quadcopter. In 2016 International Conference on Advanced Mechatronic Systems (ICAMechS) (pp. 498-503). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICAMechS.2016.7813499
[21] Singh, R., Kumar, R., Mishra, A., & Agarwal, A. (2020). Structural analysis of quadcopter frame. Materials Today: Proceedings, 22, 3320-3329. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matpr.2020.03.295
[22] Praveen, V., & Pillai, S. (2016). Modeling and simulation of quadcopter using PID controller. International Journal of Control Theory and Applications, 9(15), 7151-7158.
[23] Kurak, S., & Hodzic, M. (2018). Control and estimation of a quadcopter dynamical model. Periodicals of Engineering and Natural Sciences, 6(1), 63-75. https://doi.org/10.21533/pen.v6i1.164
[24] Huang, Q. (2016). Mathematical Modeling of Quadcopter Dynamics.
[25] Gheorghiţă, D., Vîntu, I., Mirea, L., & Brăescu, C. (2015, October). Quadcopter control system. In 2015 19th international conference on system theory, control and computing (ICSTCC) (pp. 421-426). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSTCC.2015.7321330
[26] Abbott, I. H., Von Doenhoff, A. E., & Stivers Jr, L. (1945). Summary of airfoil data (No. NACA-TR-824). [27] Eppler, R. (2012). Airfoil design and data. Springer Science & Business Media.
[28] Somers, D. M. (1997). Design and experimental results for the S809 airfoil (No. NREL/SR-440-6918). National Renewable Energy Lab.(NREL), Golden, CO (United States). https://doi.org/10.2172/437668
[29] Abbott, I. H., & Von Doenhoff, A. E. (2012). Theory of wing sections: including a summary of airfoil data. Courier Corporation.
[30] Lissaman, P. B. S. (1983). Low-Reynolds-number airfoils. Annual review of fluid mechanics, 15(1), 223-239. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.fl.15.010183.001255
[31] Sunada, S., Sakaguchi, A., & Kawachi, K. (1997). Airfoil section characteristics at a low Reynolds number. https://doi.org/10.1115/1.2819098