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Autonomous perching and installation of small devices on a street lamp

Autonomous perching and installation of small devices on a street lamp
Autonomous perching and installation of small devices on a street lamp
In the last decade, with the maturing capabilities of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for autonomous operations, there has been an increased interest in UAVs physically interacting with the environment. This is useful for those tasks that have to be carried out in remote locations, due to the significant safety risks to people and the difficulties of access by ground vehicles. Moreover, there are an estimated 7.5 million street lamps across the UK, which present a dense array of elevated sites from which crucial elements of various counter-terrorism operations could be conducted remotely, using the UAV as a platform for the efficient deployment of tactical sensors.

This paper presents a low-cost UAV system using commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) components, that is capable of autonomously perching on a street lamppost, and performing sensor (camera) (un-)installation on the lamppost with its onboard robotic arm. The platform’s autonomous perching was realized by integration of an Infra-Red (IR) tracking sensor and a laser rangefinder which tracks an IR emitter pre-installed on the lamppost. The perching mechanism is also described in this paper. Additionally, a four degree of freedom (DoF) robotic arm was implemented on the platform to perform sensor (un-)installation, which was autonomously controlled by an Arduino, with an IR ranger for sensor detection.

The system provides an efficient, safe and low-cost method for installing and removing temporary security sensors to/from street lamps to combat various anti-social behaviour offences. It can also be deployed with alternative sensors for disaster response or Chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) measurement.
Liu, Chang
7c245137-3dbb-41c6-84e6-e40181b25a0d
Paget, Leyton
c13f1f1c-a1a7-409d-b349-b0d906d65e8e
Turner, Peter
aa5c8b7a-730e-47d5-8d6e-1218b755afdd
Prior, Stephen
9c753e49-092a-4dc5-b4cd-6d5ff77e9ced
Liu, Chang
7c245137-3dbb-41c6-84e6-e40181b25a0d
Paget, Leyton
c13f1f1c-a1a7-409d-b349-b0d906d65e8e
Turner, Peter
aa5c8b7a-730e-47d5-8d6e-1218b755afdd
Prior, Stephen
9c753e49-092a-4dc5-b4cd-6d5ff77e9ced

Liu, Chang, Paget, Leyton, Turner, Peter and Prior, Stephen (2017) Autonomous perching and installation of small devices on a street lamp. In Robots for Resilient Infrastructure: an International Robotics Challenge Event.

Record type: Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)

Abstract

In the last decade, with the maturing capabilities of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for autonomous operations, there has been an increased interest in UAVs physically interacting with the environment. This is useful for those tasks that have to be carried out in remote locations, due to the significant safety risks to people and the difficulties of access by ground vehicles. Moreover, there are an estimated 7.5 million street lamps across the UK, which present a dense array of elevated sites from which crucial elements of various counter-terrorism operations could be conducted remotely, using the UAV as a platform for the efficient deployment of tactical sensors.

This paper presents a low-cost UAV system using commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) components, that is capable of autonomously perching on a street lamppost, and performing sensor (camera) (un-)installation on the lamppost with its onboard robotic arm. The platform’s autonomous perching was realized by integration of an Infra-Red (IR) tracking sensor and a laser rangefinder which tracks an IR emitter pre-installed on the lamppost. The perching mechanism is also described in this paper. Additionally, a four degree of freedom (DoF) robotic arm was implemented on the platform to perform sensor (un-)installation, which was autonomously controlled by an Arduino, with an IR ranger for sensor detection.

The system provides an efficient, safe and low-cost method for installing and removing temporary security sensors to/from street lamps to combat various anti-social behaviour offences. It can also be deployed with alternative sensors for disaster response or Chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) measurement.

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Certificate for the Runner up prize (2nd place)
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More information

Published date: 28 June 2017
Organisations: Computational Engineering & Design Group

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 411948
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/411948
PURE UUID: cd9e557d-a707-47ea-9044-9a6007e4710e
ORCID for Chang Liu: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-6967-5159
ORCID for Stephen Prior: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-4993-4942

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 03 Jul 2017 16:31
Last modified: 14 Mar 2024 02:58

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Contributors

Author: Chang Liu ORCID iD
Author: Leyton Paget
Author: Peter Turner
Author: Stephen Prior ORCID iD

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