Manobra de Inspeção de Eólicas com recurso a um UAV VTOL

• Autor(a) principal: Salgado, Diana Carina Castanheira
• Data de Publicação: 2020
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.22/16670
• topic: VTOL; Wind inspection; Trajectory planning; Autonomous control; Inspeção de eólicas; Planeamento de trajetórias; Controlo autónomo

The Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) are, more and more, inserted in the daily life of the Human Being. Its use has allowed the replacement of human beings in some tasks followed by risk, such as the inspection of electrical assets such as wind power. In addition to the human risk factor associated with these operations, the time spent on navigation is also high. One solution found is to use multirotor in this type of inspection. Despite the advantages that these vehicles present, their autonomy does not allow for chain wind inspections. In this dissertation, we propose the development of a Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) that allows the inspection of wind farms on land and offshore, and the development of an inspection maneuver that allows better use of the potential of the vehicle when it is in airplane mode and drone mode. To better understand the topic of trajectory planning, in the specific case of the inspection process, we proceeded to a more in-depth study of the algorithm developed by the ETH university, the Structural Inspection Path Planner, which consists of calculating the optimal path to inspect a structure. This study served as a starting point and comparison for the development of a new solution, designed specifically for wind farm inspection. In terms of results and implementation, we carry out the development and assembly of a VTOL, the parameterization of an autopilot to work in hybrid mode, and the development of an inspection method directed to the specific case of the inspection of a wind farm.