Autonomous Drone Delivery System

Everyone was living their routine lives before the pandemic. The COVID-19 Pandemic has disrupted normal life around the world and delivery systems have been heavily impacted by this pandemic. Lockdowns significantly affected shopping behavior and services such as goods, courier delivery and postal services have been impacted. People even had difficulty in receiving medicines purchases via online shopping.

Hardware Components

• HoverGames Drone Developer Kit (with Remote Controller)
• Telemetry radio
• Battery and charger : 3S 3500-5000mAh XT60 LiPo
• Raspberry Pi 3 Model B
• Servo motor

Software and OS

• PX4 Autopilot
• Raspberry Pi Raspbian

Communication between MAVLink and Raspberry Pi

The MAVLink must communicate with the Raspberry Pi to control the drone. Please follow this guide to make your MAVLink communcate with the Raspberry Pi.

GPS

GPS Navigation allows a drone to fly on its own with it's flying destination or points preplanned and configured into the drone remote control navigational software.

The GPS in the HoverGames drone is a NEO-M8N GNSS receiver module. The GPS coordinates of the destination will be relayed to the drone by the user.

Delivery

The drone will be designed with drop mechanism and the parcels will have parachutes if the attitude is too high. The drone will have a delivery bay door controlled by servo motors.

As soon as the drone reaches the destination's GPS coordinates, the delivery bay door will be opened and the parcel will be dropped.

Future work

An app will be created to track the drone and the delivery status. The user will be notified when the drone has reached the destination.