Abstract

One of the world’s challenges in the contemporary time is insecurity at both national and international level. Across the globe, both governments and individuals are devising various ways to improve the security of life and properties. It has been observed that different environments and areas require different ways to resolve its insecurity issues. Unmanned Arial Vehicle (UAV) has become one of the tools being used to address some national security problems. This is particularly necessary in hostile environments or large facilities where it is not cost effective to have enough security personnel to man all the place at all times – an example is a big campus. Currently, the quest in UAV research is autonomous control of its missions. In this paper, the design and implementation of autonomous ground control station (GCS) for a micro UAV for campus surveillance is presented. The aim of this paper is to create and implement an unmanned aerial vehicle ground control station for manual and autonomous control of an UAV. The Gidan kwano campus of the Federal University of Technology Minna, was used as a case study for the implementation. The work does not entail manufacturing a UAV from scratch, but it requires selection, and modification of pre-fabricated UAV frames and then to develop and install the electronic and software controls. Works have been done on autonomous UAVs, but we are yet to have a UAV control algorithm indigenous to our environment. The autonomous control system was implemented on a Java desktop application software that drives UAVs through waypoints to surveillance missions. The type of artificial intelligence employed in this work is the expert system that uses inference engine to make decisions based on information received from the UAV telemetry circuit. The driving algorithm works by arming the UAV at a reference point, the UAV is then rotated to the direction of the mission, and it is moved forward by the GCS until it reaches its destination. The results obtained from field trails were promising, the manual control of the GCS worked efficiently, the telemetry circuit was able to send information from the UAV to the GCS for analysis and proper planning of the UAV mission, and the autonomous control of the GCS was able to arm the UAV as well as control it through waypoints to its mission. The developed system can be used for military operations such as surveillance missions and aid delivery purposes, and commercial purposes such as goods delivery services.