CONTROL OF A SMALL DRONES NETWORKCONTROL OF A SMALL DRONES NETWORK

The overall aim of my proposed research project is to create a drone network which is capable of carrying out missions such as repairing, searching and monitoring, efficiently and effectively, in hazardous environment such as nuclear sites.
In this project, initially the communication between multiple drones as well as the communication between drones and a ground-station will be investigated. There is a possibility to develop a software and base it at the ground station which takes the data transmitted from the drones and uses them to continuously monitor health and plan the motion of the network. This on it's own would be a challenging task as the efficiency of communication, possibility of lose of GPS signal, localisation, path planning, and monitoring the status of the network should all be considered in the development of the ground station software. Another challenge to face is the control of the drones. There are currently two known methods to do this. One would be using the classical flight dynamics and applying controllers such as PID and investigate the stability of the drones. Another method would be to use machine learning which is a statistical approach. One of the aims of this project is to study the suitability of the network to carry out missions in radioactive environment. Therefore, different methods and materials will be studied in order to protect systems from radiation. Apart from investigating the approaches taken in similar applications, the methods used in space mission to radiation proof systems will also be studied.