Generalized software application for operation of a 3D vehicle in air, water and land

• Autor(a) principal: Peres, Diogo Rafael Baptista
• Data de Publicação: 2017
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10071/14599
• topic: Engenharia informática; Desenvolvimento de software; Veículos 3D; Drone; Rede móvel; vehicle 3D; Unmanned vehicles; Android application; multi-vehicle; Mobile networks; Aplicação Android; Veículos não tripulados; Multiveículo; Redes móveis

The unmanned vehicles (UV) and its applications are growing exponentially. Using the radio control is the most common way to control these types of vehicles for being a simple and cheap method to control an UV. However, it doesn’t have a visual interface that allows the user to see the vehicle’s information such as battery status, speed, distance, geolocation, etc. To deal with this problem, some mobile and desktop applications have been developed. To communicate between the control device and the vehicle, dongles are commonly used to establish the connection using radio, Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. In most cases, these technologies don’t allow the user to control at long distances, Beyond Line Of-Sight (BLOS), and these applications are focused to use mostly on multi-copters, and most of the times, they only allow to connect a vehicle at a time. The purpose of this dissertation is to study the reliability of an application able to control multiple types of vehicles, such as aerial, land and water vehicles. This application allows the user to connect multiple vehicles at the same time using a single device, easily change the vehicle assigned to control, by using mobile networks to perform the communication between the developed application and the vehicle. In this way, it will be possible to connect a 3D – hybrid vehicle, which is a vehicle capable of moving in water, land and air environments, allowing the user to control the vehicle at long distances with video feedback. To achieve the purpose of this dissertation, it was developed an Android application to allow controlling the vehicle by using mobile networks to communicate. In the vehicle, besides the common electronics used in an unmanned vehicle (ESC’s, motors, batteries, controller board, etc.), it will be used a Raspberry Pi 2 model B with a 3rd Generation (3G) and 4th Generation (4G) dongle that will connect the vehicle to the internet, routing the messages coming from the controller board placed in the vehicle to the mobile application. It was also developed a server application to do the user management and exchange the messages coming from both platforms: vehicle and application.