Development of an Anemometer to Assist a Quadrotor with Auxiliary Thrusters

In recent years, rapid deterioration of infrastructure equipment is regarded as a problem and the maintenance management of it is important for preventing serious accidents. Particularly, in a bridge like the Seto-Ohashi, it takes a long time to inspect the whole and it is also dangerous because of high-place work. Then, use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can be considered as one of the alternative ways to the human visual-check. Among them, Quadrotors are attracting attention and they have excellent maneuverability and operability because they control the position and attitude of the airframe by changing the revolution velocity of four rotors. However, since a thrust cannot be generated except for upward direction, there is a weak point in which it is out of control, if it is affected by the influence of an ascending current etc. when hovering. In particular, vortices are generated around huge structures represented by bridges, so that it is difficult to inspect without considering this effect. In this research, it is aimed at developing a Quadrotor that can check infrastructures in harsh environments by attaching auxiliary thrusters and an anemometer. This paper first outlines a proposed Quadrotor. In addition, it verifies the accuracy of our own built-in anemometer. Finally, the effect of the airframe on the anemometer is verified through some experiments. The experimental results showed that the manufactured anemometer needs to be redesigned.