Description

STORK I is an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), which has been developed by INESC TEC and the Autonomous Systems Laboratory (LSA) of the School of Engineering of the Polytechnic Institute of Porto (ISEP). It is operating since 2015.

STORK I is a customized hexarotor based on a commercial airframe from DJI S900. It has a 900 mm diameter, a payload capacity of 4.9 kg with an endurance up to 25 minutes. It uses an open-source autopilot from Pixhawk project running PX4 firmware.

In order to communicate and control the vehicle, several wireless communication links are used, such as:

• A RF link at 433 MHz (low frequency, in order to increase the range), used to remotely operate the vehicle, if needed.
• A RF link at 2.4 GHz, used by the emergency stop system.
• A 5 GHz Wi-Fi link between the on-board computer and the base station, used to send commands and receive information about the vehicle’s status and the collected data.
• A RF link is used to ensure a redundant communication line, which provides information about the vehicle’s status, even when the Wi-Fi link is lost.