D4.1 - Advanced UAV Design

This report presents the collaborative work done between CO.RI.S.T.A. and
HYPERION SEVEN to come up with a design for the drone that will be used
for the FlyRadar project. This report concludes first that the optimal design t o
be used is a classical quadcopter, and one suitable for the anticipated payload
weight would be the TUNDRA, built by HEXADRONE. Various mechanical
pieces will have to be built in order to mount the radar and its various antennas
onto the drone. Finally, it was first foreseen that the use of a tether between
the drone and a ground station could be utilized in order to power the drone
indefinitely and have a fiber optic line to the ground, which would allow to re-
trieve the captured data in real time and avoid to need of an on-board computer.
However, the radar design of CO.RI.S.T.A. includes a computer small enough
that an optical link is no longer needed. Moreover, in the aim of having t he
drone fly in the desert (terrestrial terrains analogous to Mars), it is probably
better to stick to the traditional way of powering a drone, i.e. a battery, making
the need for a tether inexistent.