Design of an Autonomous UAV for Racing Applications

A drone is an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) that can be controlled manually by humans as well as by other algorithms not involving any human interaction. In this paper, we have described the way through which we have developed a robust and responsive racing drone alongside the simulation that includes the use of the ROS Mavlink as one of the ways to control the drone using a base station as well as path planning for autonomous flight travel. The drone will be controlled; by using a Pixhawk autopilot having a high processing capability, and easy interaction with other peripheral devices. With this, we were successfully able to design a low-weight racing drone, with each motor producing an upward thrust of 350g. Along with this, we have used a single ppm output receiver channel which reduces the number of wires and ultimately reduces the complexity of the drone, and that too at a very reasonable cost.