Development of an autonomous IoT-based drone for campus security

Abstract

In recent years, drone technology has gained popularity across the world because of its numerous applications, particularly in security and surveillance. This technology can be further revolutionized with the deployment of Industrial Revolution 4.0 Technology. This paper discusses the development of an IoT-based autonomous drone for more comprehensive campus security and surveillance system. The drone is featured with the capability of conducting a fully autonomous aerial surveillance, being the first responder in emergencies, streaming video while flying, avoiding obstacles, following a target and communicating with the current IoT based UTM’s security patrolling system for data transfer and drone control. This has been accomplished by using the open source ArduPilot software, Pixhawk flight controller along with Dronekit python library installed on a Raspberry Pi 4. The findings show that the actual performance of the designed drone is fairly similar to the simulation results. The drone has successfully performed autonomous navigation to incident location with 1 to 2 meter accuracy as well as follow-me mode. The cellular technology utilized for drone communication also is more robust and provides promising solution to overcome short operation range and interference.