World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology 42 2008

Development of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Manual Control System

Thae Su Aye, Pan Thu Tun, Zaw Min Naing, and Yin Mon Myint

AbstractUnmanned aerial vehicles are aircrafts capable of flight without an on-board operator. Such vehicles can be controlled remotely by an operator on the ground, or autonomously via a preprogrammed flight path. UAVs are already being used by the military for recognizance and search and rescue operations. This paper describes design and implementation of manual remote control system for UAV. The testing system in our lab includes two control systems: automatic control and manual control. This paper is for manual control of vehicle to get the desired target via the joysticks. UHF wireless transmitter and receiver pairs are used for data communication link between the ground station and the receiver on the vehicle. The control system is based on microcontroller PIC16F877 that is used for low part cost, software tools available, inexpensive. The microcontroller C language is used for this control system. KeywordsRemote control, manual control, unmanned aerial
(UAV), microcontroller, radio control.

Fig. 1 Avionic System of Quad-rotor UAV project

I. INTRODUCTION NMANNED aerial vehicles (UAVs) are crafts capable of flight without an onboard pilot. They can be controlled remotely by an operator, or can be controlled autonomously via preprogrammed flight paths. Such aircraft have already been implemented by the military for recognizance flights. Further use for UAVs by the military, specifically as tools for search and rescue operations, warrant continued development of UAV technology. An uninhabited air vehicle has found diverse applications for both civil and military missions. To achieve the stated mission, the vehicle needs to have a certain level of autonomy to maintain its stability following a desired path under embedded guidance, navigation and control algorithm. To meet the increasingly more stringent operation requirements, the UAV relys on the skill of the ground pilot and the autonomous capabilities dictated by a reliable onboard computer system. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to deliver a control command to steer UAVs control surfaces by using manual remote control system.
Manuscript received November 15, 2007. This work was supported in part by the Ministry of Science and Technology, Union of Myanmar. Thae Su Aye and Pan Thu Tun are with the Mandalay Technological University, Mandalay, Myanmar (phone: 095-2-88704(Electronic Engineering Department), fax: 095-2-88702(Office, MTU), e-mail: thae.su.aye14@gmail.com and panthutun@gmail.com). Zaw Min Naing, PhD, is their supervisor and he is pro-rector of Technological University (Maubin), Myanmar. Yin Mon Myint, PhD, is their co-supervisor, head of department at MTU.

Normally, the architecture of UAV project is shown in Fig. 1. The content of this paper is just only for the manual remote control system from the ground station via the home make joysticks. For data communication link between ground station and the vehicle, TWS434 transmitter and RWS434 receiver from Reynolds Electronics Co.ltd with PIC16F877 are used in this system. II. SYSTEM HARDWARE COMPONENTS
The overall system configuration is briefly represented in this section and the hardware used in this research and the physical

integration of the components are also described. System architecture is shown in Fig. 2. A. PIC Microcontroller The PIC 16F877 (Microchip Technology, Inc., www.microchip.com) 8-bit microcontroller was chosen to obtain the analog data from the joysticks in transmitting section and control the motors on the UAV. This microcontroller has a 25 MHz processor (the current compiler runs the processor at 20 MHz), 33 input/output (I/O) pins, (8k*14words) of Enhanced FLASH program memory, (386*8bytes) of RAM, (256*8bytes) of data EEPROM. The PIC does not have an operating system and simply runs the program in its memory when it is turned on. This PIC microcontroller has several hardware features that are very useful for use in a UAV and simplify the interfacing of sensors and motors with the microcontroller, such as an analog to digital converter (ADC), interrupts, timers, and capture/compare/pulse width modulation (CCP) channels.

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3) Able to reverse directions quickly 4) Able to accelerate and decelerate to reach a position or rate of speed quickly D. Servo Control The servo control board is a homemade prototype. The processor is PIC16F877 with 8 channel PWM signal out put. It can command 8 servos at the same time with RS-232 serial port. PWM signal is used extensively on DC servo control, such as the hobby model DC servo. A square wave is outputted 50 times per second. The width of the square wave decides the horn of the servo oscillating angle, and the wave width is described according to the continuous time. When the width of the square wave equals1.5 millisecond, the horn of the servo keeps on neutral position, 45degree angle. The width of square will change from 1 to 2 millisecond, and the horn of servo will rotate amount 0~90 degree angle as shown in Fig. 5.

Fig. 2 Block diagram of the System

B. Transmitter Receiver Modules A pair of TWS/RWS 434 transmitter receiver module interfacing microcontroller is used to send and receive data between the ground station and quad-rotor. Two 433MHz whip style antenna s are also used in the set up for long range detection. The TW-434 outputs up to 8mW at 433.92 MHz. It has an operating range of about 400 ft. outdoors, or about 200 ft. indoors. It can go through most walls. The operational voltage varies from 1.5 to 12 V and it accepts both linear and digital input. Fig. 3 below shows the schematic of the transmitter with its pin specifications.

Fig.5 Servo motor

Fig. 3 RF Transmitter Schematic

The RWS-434 receiver also operates at 433.92 MHz with an operational voltage of around 4.5 5.5VDC. Its sensitivity is 3 V, and it can have both linear and digital outputs. Fig.4 below shows the schematic of this receiver with the pin specifications.

Fig. 6 Servos are controlled by 1-2 ms pulses

Fig. 4 RF Receiver Schematic C. Servo Motor (F-S148) This kind of servo motor was chosen according to the following advantages. 1) High torque at all speeds 2) Capable of holding a static (no motion) position

E. Homemade Joystick The designs of homemade joysticks are made to be able to control 4 servo motors simultaneously. In this paper, joysticks are to manage rudder, elevator, and propeller of small UAV model to get required movement. Physical model is designed to be able to adjust the range of each angle with response to the range of angle of joysticks.

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F. Small modal UAV To test the control system, a small model UAV was designed as a test bed. The range of angle of rudder and elevator was designed to have a ranging between -45 degree and +45 degree.

III. SYSTEM INTEGRATION AND SOFTWARE A. CCS C Compiler Feature CCS, Inc. has developed a C compiler called the PCWH for the PIC 16F877 microcontroller (http://www.ccsinfo.com). This compiler is easy to use with CCSs Windows based IDE (integrated development environment) and its C aware editor. This is not an ANSI compliant C compiler and it has some differences from a traditional C compiler because of separate code and data segments in the PIC hardware. This compiler does have some of the standard ANSI library and math functions and has many extensions that are useful when working with the PIC hardware. The compiler has built-in libraries for working with RS232 serial input and output, digital input and output, and precision delays and makes hardware features such as timers and A/D conversion easy to use with C functions. It also supports 32 bit floating point numbers and floating point math, which is very important for the calculations used in the control algorithm. B. System Integration: Interface to Hardware This section describes the C code that was written to interface the microcontroller with the hardware used in this project. 1) Joystick and A/D Converter The 10 bit analog to digital converter on the PIC microcontroller was used to convert the signal representing the joystick movement to an integer value that could be used by the microcontroller. 2) PWM mode in CCP Channel Since servo motor is controlled by means of managing PWM, the features of CCP (Capture/Compare/Pulse Width Modulation) play in important role. The period of the PWM is set up using the following formula: PWM period = < (PR2)+1>*4*Tosc*(TMR2 prescaler value) The PWM duty cycle is specified by writing to the CCPR1L register and to the CCP1CON<5:4>.The overall meaning of the control system is to calculate the required duty cycle to control the servo motor. 3) Timer and Counter Tmer2 is configured to produce PWM with the required frequency. According to the nature of servo motor, the frequency is set up to be 50Hz.

C. Communication Protocols The transmitter section uses a specific protocol to send commands to the vehicle over an RS-232 connection. When manual control is enabled, the transmitter sends a constant stream of ASCII packet to the vehicle computer. These packets consist of five pieces of information, separated by underscores. These pieces of information are: manual control status, propeller speed, rudder angle, elevator angle, and a check sum. Manual Control status is denoted by a 0 or a 1. If Manual Control is enabled, a 1 is the first element of the packet. If Manual Control is disabled, a single packet of five zeroes, (separated by underscores) is sent to the vehicle, and then the transmitter stops streaming data. Propeller speed is sent to the vehicle as a signed value, between 300 and +300. This represents propeller speeds between 300 rotations per minute and +300 rotations per minute. Rudder angle and elevator angle are both sent to the vehicle as signed values, ranging from 4500 to +4500. These numbers represent hundredths of degrees, ranging between 45 degrees and positive 45 degrees. Positive rudder angles cause the vehicle to turn to port when moving forward. Positive elevator angles cause the elevator to go trailing edge low, causing the vehicle to dive The last element of the packet is a checksum. The checksum is calculated by summing the status, the absolute value of propeller speed, the absolute value of rudder angle, and the absolute value of the elevator angle. The software on the vehicle also sums these values, and if the solution that it calculates is different from the sent checksum, the packet is ignored. An important consideration when creating this protocol was the requirement that it could be used by other user-interfaces to send information to the vehicle. In Manual Control mode, the vehicle is listening for packets following this protocol. It is not concerned about what is sending these packets. Sample packet: 1 Status _ 250 _ 1000 _ -3000 _ 4251* rudder angle checksum

propeller elevator speed angle

Checksum: |status| + |propeller speed| + |elevator angle| + |rudder angle| D. Software In order to be compatible with the selected microprocessor, the code is written in PIC C language. While this has somewhat limited capabilities, it is appropriate technology for this system. Whenever the microprocessor is powered up, its first task is to calibrate the joysticks. Due to the fact that elevator and rudder angle, as well as propeller speed, are adjusted by moving the joysticks. After calibration, the processor checks the state of the Manual Control On/Off switch. If the switch is in the Off

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position, a single Manual Control off packet is sent to the vehicle, and then an off loop is entered. In the off loop, the processor sends no data to the vehicle, and keeps querying the state of the Manual Control On/off switch. If the switch is set to Manual Control On, the On subroutine is run and Manual Control On packet is sent to the vehicle. Fig. 8 and Fig.9 show the control algorithm for the transmitting and receiving data between the ground station and vehicle. The first part of the program declares all of the variables needed throughout the program. The functions used to communicate between transmitter and receiver sections are also defined. For transmitting section, at the start of the program set up AD conversion and process this conversion for the analog signals from each joystick by using setup_adc(mode), setup_adc_potrs(value), set_adc_channel(channel) and reac_adc(mode) functions. This ADC values are encoded and send the command to the vehicle by the specific protocol.

Fig. 9 Receive Control Algorithm for one surface E. Display Unit We used Hyperlink software as the monitor. The unit including RS-232 processes this nature. The program displays the state of angles controlled by joysticks. Moreover, the output PWM signals to drive motors are displayed on the oscilloscope. IV. CIRCUIT DESIGN OF THE SYSTEM This section shows how to design the circuit of the remote control of this system. Fig.10 and Fig.11 show the circuit of the system. It is very simple and easily constructed.

Fig. 8 Transmit Control Algorithm for one surface In the receiver portion, at the beginning of the program set up PWM channel by using setup_ccp1 (mode) and set up timer2 to define period of PWM by using setup_timer_2 (mode, period, post scale). And the sending commands are received and then decoded these data and decide which servo mounted on the control surface to be driven and output the PWM signal to responsible servo.
Fig. 10 Circuit Diagram for Transmitter

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[7]

[8]

[9]

Roberts, J.M., Corke, P.I., Buskey, G., Design of a Four-Rotor Aerial Robot, Proceedings of the 2002 Australasian Conference on Robotics and Automation, Auckland, New Zealand, 2002, pp. 71-76. Scott D. Hanford, Lyle N. Long, and Joseph F. Horn., A Small SemiAutonomous Rotary-Wing Unmanned Air Vehicle (UAV), American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Infotech@Aerospace Conference, Paper No. 2005-7077 Reynolds Electronics, TWS434/RWS434 datasheet, www.rentron.com

Fig. 11 Circuit Diagram for Receiver Section

V. CONCLUSION A UAV system has been designed with an emphasis on using inexpensive coat components. The components have been integrated and manual remote control system has been successfully implemented by using these components and pre determined program. This research has demonstrated that low-cost components can be used to create a control system that will allow automatic flight for a UAV with additional sensors such as cameras, sonar, and optic flow sensors to increase the level of UAV autonomy. ACKNOWLEDGMENT Firstly the authors would like to thank their parents for their best wishes to join the PhD research. His Excellency Minister U Thaung, Ministry of Science and Technology will also get the authors great thanks for his special guidance to pay chances for them. Special thanks are due to their Supervisors: Dr.Zaw Min Naing (Pro-rector), Technological University, Maubin and Dr. Yin Mon Myint (Deputy Professor and Head of Electronic Engineering Dept) from Mandalay Technological University, Mandalay, and Union of Myanmar for their kindness of guidelines for this paper. The authors greatly express their thanks to the member of their UAV project and to all persons whom will concern to support in preparing this paper. REFERENCES
[1] Allug, E. et al. Control of a Quad-rotor Helicopter Using Visual Feedback. International Conference on Robotics &Automation, Washington, DC May 2002. <http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/7916/21826/01013341.pdf>. Nice, Eryk B. Design of Four Rotor Hovering Vehicle. Thesis presented for the degree of Masters of Science, Cornell University, and May 2004. Carlo Canetta, Jonathan Chin, Evan Mehrabian, Ludguier Montejo, Hendrik Thompson, Quad-rotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, Final Report, May 2, 2007. Microchip Technology, Inc.2001, PIC16F877A Data Sheet, www.microchip.com William Finn, 2005, ECE 445, Senior Design Project, Project No.34 Ann Marie Polsenberg, MIT, 2000, Developing an AUV Manual Remote Control System

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