Development of Autonomous Battery Charging Station for Campus Surveillance UAV

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) plays an essential role in various industries. It has been used in surveillance, photography, reconnaissance, environmental data collection, agriculture, and many other purposes. However, the main problem of UAVs is that, it is time-consuming to manually recharge the battery and natural phenomena like sunray and rain while operating in an open area. Thus, an autonomous battery charging station can solve the problem as it does not require human interaction and can protect the drone from natural phenomena. In this work, an autonomous charging station for UAV is designed, fabricated, and developed. The main focus of the charging station is the door mechanism, platform mechanism, and positioning mechanism. The Hilux bed size is the primary concern for sizing the charging station as it will be used for transporting, and the dimensions for the charging station is as follows length, width, and height (1450 mm × 1400 mm × 1200 mm). The parallel positioning mechanism has been used to control the UAV on the charging station platform. However, a linear actuator has been used to control the door mechanism of the charging station. After fabrication of the charging station, it can be seen that it can operate in any weather while protecting the UAV from rain and sunray and the operating time of the charging station is less than 90 s.