Design Considerations for Long Endurance Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

The arena of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) has for many years been dominated by the defence industries. The reason for this can be attributed to the complexity and cost of designing, constructing and operating of these vehicles. An additional contributing factor is the legislative issues around operating an unmanned aircraft in civilian airspace. However in resent years advances in micro-electronics especially Micro Electronic Mechanical Systems (MEMS) and advanced composite manufacturing techniques have placed the design and construction of UAVs in the domain of the commercial civilian users. A number of commercial UAV applications have emerged where the legislative requirements for operating of a UAV in segregated airspace can be met. UAVs are extremely well suited for the dull, dirty and dangerous tasks encountered in performing surveying and surveillance applications. For these tasks the primary design considerations in the design of the UAV would be the propulsion system, the guidance and control system and the payload system.

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