A feasibility study of an harmless tiltrotor for smart farming applications

In the last decades, Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS) have been developed for many civil applications, such as surveillance and terrain monitoring, Search and Rescue (S&R), topography, photogrammetry and law enforcement missions, and widely media and entertainment applications. Moreover, the use of the unmanned configuration is becoming very promising for smart farming or precision agriculture. The paper deals with a feasibility study of an harmless tiltrotor for specific smart faming applications. In order to define the final layout of the vehicle, the main RPAS configurations are analyzed in terms of performances and kinds of applications. Indeed, a trade-off between endurance and payload capacity is more than anything else required during the design of an RPAS for the smart farming application, where sensors are often heavy and several hectares must be scanned. For these reasons, the hybrid configuration, with features both of the fixed wing configuration and of the rotary wing one, has been identified. Moreover, the final configuration should be defined harmless, that is in case of impact with the human body, there are no injuries for the involved people. As a matter of fact, people safety must not be compromised in each situation, also when RPAS are applied over wide fields.