Introduction

With accidents happening on a more day to day basis first responders currently have minimal time to get to certain accident scenes taking much more time to evaluate a crash site or examining the area for traffic to find the best route to the destination of the accident. UAVs have gotten an increase in population due to technologies advancement in intel gathering and sharing of information UAVs didn’t normally get traction until around the early 2000’s where the technology had improved allowing for small scale fixed wing UAVs to be manufactured and flown for different purposes, most were used for military purposes and very few were used in certain industries for data collection. Slowly through the years technology has allowed for companies to expand on the UAVs which leaves us to where we are today in 2022 having different types of UAVs for the military for stealth, surveillance, or used for lethal purposes or drones for company purposes.

Current State of Drones

The Current state of fixed wing UAVs is that they are now commonly known and used for multiple purposes such as military units using advanced UAVs to pinpoint and or gather information for the military units and these UAVs like said earlier are used for stealth surveillance and can sometimes be used with lethal force but the more common used drones are quadcopter drones which are a small scaled aircraft that can fly for certain distances at a specific speed for a specified amount of time and these are normally bought or built. Police also have specified drones but are quite expensive for manufacturing but come with state of the art technology to gather intel on certain incidents.

There are also specific drones that can carry more than the normal weight for drones and are used for delivering items to a specific location if needed. These drones are not used for surveillance but instead for transportation of certain products like food, water, or medical equipment. Payload carrying drones don't require an immense amount of computational energy and the way companies would accomplish this is by setting up waypoints that the drone can follow to reach its destination. The military primarily uses airplanes to transport cargo but in an economical friendly way they deliver smaller scaled cargo through the use of drones.

Problems with Current drones

Drones have advanced in more ways than one from when they first started gaining traction, but the current state of drones is not perfect. There are still many problems that have not been solved about drones functions. For example, many small scaled drones have problems with detection of certain obstacles, unless someone is manually controlling the drone, the drones themselves can not maneuver on their own. Most issues involving first responders normally take a long time to resolve more than the average battery life of these small scaled drones. Currently drones can only last on average 30 minutes which is not enough time for first responders to gather all the information needed. drones for search and rescue still lack credibility due to the recognition of human movements signaling for help. The drone itself is not fully capable of understanding human movement which causes some problems in the field of search and rescue missions. A problem which comes up as well is the disruption of certain radio frequencies which can cause the aircraft to malfunction and lose control which can cause some major problems in terms of the safety for civilians.

Cost is a major problem for fixed wing UAVs which is why we don't normally see small scaled UAVs be used in first responders situations. With the immense cost that it requires to manufacture and operate advanced drones they are not worth the time and money to invest in for the law enforcement and first responders due to most of the issues surrounding the use of drones in this day and age. Privacy is a controversial topic when it comes to drone usage in certain scenarios which ties in with a major problem that drones currently face.

Quadcopter and Fixed Wing Analysis

While there are multiple types of drone configurations in the market, the team has chosen to perform a heavy analysis on the quadcopter and fixed wing designs due to their current prevalent use in the military, terrain and landscape mapping, surveillance, and other very similar industries.

The concept of rotor-propelled drones is based on the generation of lift forces that equal or surpass the weight of the drone itself. However, one propeller would only grant the user control over the drone’s height which meant that by Newton's third Law, the aircraft would rotate indefinitely as a result of propeller rotations. Through many iterations and addition of propellers, the quadcopter concept emerged as one that could grant the user a significant control over the aircraft’s experienced thrust and lift forces as well as dominion of the drone’s experienced torque when proper propeller cycles were instructed. This means that a quadcopter now possesses the ability to move forward and backwards, tilt from side to side, rotate or yaw about its vertical axis and hover in one position which allows for the performing of intricate flight patterns with ease.

Fixed wing UAV are modeled from real life sized aircrafts and adapted to fly with either autonomous flight settings or to be guided by the user. This drone type tends to rely heavily on the use of vertical propellers, and controllable wing fins in varied angling to guide air flow and control the drone’s velocity during flight. While landing gear can be incorporated, there are fixed wing designs in the market that do not rely on it. Fixed wing drones can have various wing and tail configurations, like the blended wing and V-tail designs that alter synchronization and make stabilizing more complex, but the design we will use for the analysis is the conventional drone with vertical and horizontal stabilizers due to their ease of maneuverability and control.

Given that the objectives for our purpose are mainly surveillance, cost efficiency and information relay, it is good to analyze the use of drones in the field of land mapping. According to the land mapping company Drone Deploy, multi-rotor drones dominate this industry as they make up over 90% of their market. This may be due to the drone’s efficient maneuverability which eases the use of camera equipment and gyration mechanisms. Despite this, fixed wing drones like the RQ-11 Raven UAV and its iterations have been used for missions due to the drone’s ability to cover long distances at high speeds. The quadcopter designs rely on the generation of lift to fly which consumes a great amount of energy and limits the maximum flight time to an average of 30 minutes in ideal weather conditions. The introduction of drag forces also limit how high and fast a quadcopter can go as more individual propeller compensation will be needed, while most fixed wing drone designs are more stable given the aerodynamics of the drone which aids the flight capabilities in winded conditions. While quadcopters may be cheaper, easier to perform maintenance on, and easier to use than a fixed wing design, we must not forget that the purpose of our applications also plays a detrimental part into the weighting of each of these categories. In the case of propeller failure, fixed wing designs are able to glide to landing while quadcopters will experience a drastic disturbance in how lift, thrust and moment generation is controlled due to the placement of each propeller. Ultimately making the fixed wing drone an optimal choice for our purpose.

Conclusion

As a whole, the research aims to gain better understanding of the factors that will influence the final design choice of the team's unmanned aerial vehicle for the aid of first responders at a global scale. As mentioned earlier, the current drone market and its improvements during the previous decades has led to an unprecedented increase of drone application in a variety of industries and for various consumers. With an evolving concept like UAV implementation, opportunities to solve current problems faced by government bodies like the first responders are now in place. The gathering of data will guide the team in further data implementation through many analysis tools like decision matrices, and simulation breakdowns.

References

http://www.iaeng.org/publication/IMECS2021/IMECS2021_pp178-183.pdf

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/a715/57b7794611b676cffca39e4c8b4527bf9003.pdf

https://medium.com/aerial-acuity/choosing-the-right-mapping-drone-for-your-business-part-i-multi-rotor-vs-fixed-wing-aircraft-6ec2d02eff48#:~:text=Significant%20range%3A%20Fixed%20wing%20aircraft,often%20during%20a%20single%20mission.

RQ-11 Raven Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, United States of America (army-technology.com)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xl91tKg126Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-LfLW9Kgis