Design and Development of an Autonomous Multi-Functional Hexacopter Drone

This paper demonstrates the design and fabrication of an autonomous multi-functional hexacopter drone. The proposed drone can spray liquid pesticides at a rate of 1 liter/minute using a high-speed automatic pesticides sprayer integrated with the drone. For surveillance application, a high-definition camera and a video transmitter have been included with the drone that can capture and transmit real-time video of any desired trajectory. We also utilized the captured images for ortho-photography. The hexacopter drone can fly at a maximum velocity of 36 kilometer/hour with a maximum altitude of 200 meters. The maximum range of the drone is approximately 2 kilometers, whereas the maximum endurance of the drone is ~ 25 minutes when flying at an altitude of 10 meters. The empty weight and payload capacity of the drone are 5.0 kg and 4.4 kg. The flying path of the drone is autonomously controlled from the ground control station. In addition, the drone can be manually controlled by means of a remote controller. The production cost of the drone is just within 1,600 $. The developed autonomous multi-functional hexacopter drone is suitable for wide range of commercial applications including agricultural, surveillance & monitoring, and aerial shooting.