Demonstration of In-Flight Docking Between Quadcopters and Fixed-Wing UAV

Drones are being used increasingly as innovative tools in the medical field. RED (Rescue-Delivery) system is a project designed to help emergency situations by utilizing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) to deliver medical supplies. Although multiple air-based delivery methods are currently available, they all have certain limitations. Dropping a package from a fixed wing aircraft using a parachute is limited by its accuracy, while using a multirotor drone on its own to deliver a package is limited by its low endurance, range, and efficiency. Thus, a need exists for an aerial delivery system which is both accurate and quick to deliver a payload at a distant location. By using a combination of a fixed-wing mothership and a multirotor drone, the RED system will be able to conduct a fast, accurate and autonomous delivery of a payload from a base to the rescue location, and then return to the starting position. The compact design of the multirotor allows for precise maneuverability even in urbanized areas. The mothership is first loaded with the payload and the coordinates of the delivery location. Upon reaching the pre-selected area, the multirotor and payload detach from the mothership. The multirotor quickly reaches the coordinates and delivers the payload. Once the delivery is accomplished, the multirotor rendezvous and docks with the mothership. Both drones then return to the base with complete autonomy. A companion computer in each UAV is used to imitate each stage of the mission and ensure communication among each interface of the system. The communication between mothership and multirotor is accomplished through a high-speed cellular network system. The rendezvous begins with the multirotor following GPS coordinates of the mothership to align with its flightpath. Once within proximity, the final docking maneuver is initiated by the image tracking system which captures real-time video and processes it frame by frame. By using an open source python library, each video frame's data can be captured and manipulated to achieve the desired results using OpenCV. It will also present test results of the flight tests of the docking system.