VIBRATION-BASED STRUCTURAL HEALTH MONITORING OF DELIVERY DRONES: ANALYSIS OF PRELIMINARY EXPERIMENTS

The development of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) has progressed very rapidly in recent years and finds many applications in various industrial fields. The technological progress brings serious challenges, especially regarding flight safety, as any unexpected behavior of the drone can lead to serious consequences. The autonomous usage of delivery drones requires a high reliability especially in urban areas. This motivates the development and application of structural health monitoring (SHM) systems. In this work, we present and discuss the results of preliminary experiments of a vibration-based SHM system for delivery drones. In particular, we focus on the hover phase during take-off in which the airworthiness can be assessed within seconds. For this purpose, the drone is first launched and a measurement is made using acceleration sensors. The measurement data is evaluated using three different metrics one of which is the Nullspace-Based Fault Detection (NSFD) method. It was demonstrated here that added masses can be detected through the analysis of mechanical vibrations.