Abstract

The United States Navy regularly runs reconnaissance missions that search for suspicious ships off the coast of the country. Using the Boeing P-8 Poseidon aircraft, the teams involved in the reconnaissance mission attempt to identify suspicious ships, and when identified as suspicious, follow the ship until the Coast Guard can arrive to intervene. The goal for this project is to build an autonomous drone with a beacon deployment system that is able to identify and mark the ships. The specific objectives to complete this goal include: (1) constructing a drone capable of carrying a payload of 5-15 pounds; (2) developing an effective autopilot for hovering at a steady altitude and landing; (3) creating a beacon that can send out a steady signal to be traced; (4) having a beacon deployment system that is capable of effectively deploying the beacon; (5) creating a responsive user interface to send and display data to and from the drone; (6) training a neural network to recognize suspicious ships based on images; (7) creating an algorithm to make accurate trajectory predictions(8) developing the characteristics and layout of the drone flight path; and (9) creating an efficient tracking and monitoring system.