2023 8th International Conference on Business and Industrial Research 18 - 19 May 2023
(ICBIR2023) Bangkok, Thailand
Design and Development of Autonomous Drone to
Detect and Alert Intruders in Surveillance Areas
Jiranuwat Piriyasupakij
Huahin Vitthayalai School
Prachuap Khiri Khan Thailand
jiranuwatpiriyasupakij@gmail.com
2023 8th International Conference on Business and Industrial Research (ICBIR) | 979-8-3503-9964-6/23/$31.00 ©2023 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/ICBIR57571.2023.10147697
Abstract— The design and development of Autonomous Drone
to detect and alert intruders in the surveillance area is a technology
to support law enforcement personnel involved. To assess the
situation, and to detect persons entering the surveillance area to
alert relevant authorities. The structure is made of plastic and
carbon fiber in the shape of a hexagon Autonomous Drone. The
control unit is divided into flight controller and intruder detection
camera control unit. The flight controller uses the Pixhawk board
with: GPS module, Telemetry module, Receiver module and ESC
module through Mission Planner control program. The intruder
detection camera uses the Roboflow platform for object detection
to detect people.
Aviation is divided into 2 operation types. Manual is using:
Stabilizer mode and Loiter mode. Automatic operation uses Auto
mode to fly by waypoint working for human detection. In testing
an Autonomous Drone to detect and alert intruders in the
surveillance area, the test was divided into 3 parts: manual flight,
automatic flight, and automatic flight with detection of people in
the surveillance area. It was found that the manual flight has the
highest accuracy of 97.50%. The automatic flight at 100 meters has
the highest accuracy of 98.50%. Lastly, the automatic flight with
human detection, in detecting and alerting at a height of 3 meters,
has the highest accuracy of 97.00%. In the design and development
of Autonomous Drone, there were problems in the structure
designed with a 3D Printer to support the weight so that fastening
of the parts could not be achieved as intended, resulting in the
design of a new structure. The camera detection of the
Autonomous Drone had problem in that the range of the active
camera and the speed of the Autonomous Drone must be
appropriate for the detection to work properly.
Keywords— Drone, Autonomous, Object Detect, Raspberry pi,
Notification
I. INTRODUCTION
In the current situation, security issues are urgently needed to
be taken care of and resolved. Giving flexibility to investigate
the situation quickly in order to assess the severity and to trace
offenders is beneficial to the relevant authorities to prevent
incidents from turning violent. [1] The drone can fly fully
autonomously and search or capture videos/photos of the
required location. Location commands could be given using PC,
mobile and with the help of IoT, using Raspberry Pi. From the
incident, the perpetrator who invaded the premises or public
areas will take time to search for, track and arrest because it is a
wide area, making search planning for tracking and arrest
necessary to obtain clear information about the perpetrators for
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Ratchada Prasitphan
Huahin Vitthayalai School
Prachuap Khiri Khan Thailand
meteemaker@gmail.com
the safety of the officers and people involved. [2] There will be
many drones present at the beach for the rescue process, but only
one drone should be selected for the rescue process for there a
GUI is created with the help of Visual C where in the life guard
can select the drone for the rescue mission. From the long period
of time spent searching for, tracking, and arresting due to the
lack of clear information on the perpetrators, the perpetrators are
more likely to hide or commit crimes, leading to violence and
damage to life and property. [3] While person tracking has made
significant progress over the last few years, most of the existing
approaches are of limited success in real-time applications using
moving sensors. In particular, we emphasize in this paper the
need for a visual tracker that enables autonomous navigation
functionality to drones (UAVs), mainly to follow a specific
target.
Therefore, developers have a need to solve problems and see
the importance of Autonomous Drone technology that can be
applied in conjunction with detection technology to increase the
ability to find and detect intruders, and to alert the relevant
authorities to receive accurate and clear information of the
perpetrators. The autonomous unmanned aerial vehicle must
have a strong structure to prevent the attack of intruders or
offenders with the aim of finding and detecting intruders or
offenders. [4] In my case the processing/detection will be done
locally using a Raspberry Pi4 module, mounted on the drone.
The first part of our research consisted of building a lightweight
drone with some of the best racing components, chosen carefully
for our specific needs. The second part consisted of
implementing a computationally-low-cost detection algorithm
on the Raspberry Pi. By acting as a device that goes to inspect at
the crime scene to collect data or act as a patrol in the
surveillance area in order to prevent violent incidents and reduce
the loss of life and property as much as possible. [5] Drones can
be very useful in search and rescue missions primarily due to the
aerial imaging capability. Drones can assist ground teams
searching for a missing person, and law enforcement officers in
crowd control.
 2023 8th International Conference on Business and Industrial Research 18 - 19 May 2023
(ICBIR2023) Bangkok, Thailand

II. OBJECTIVE
1.) Study of the structural design and flight control unit of the
Autonomous Drone.
2.) Autonomous Drone can maneuver and autonomously as
required.
3.) Autonomous Drone can detect and alert to intruders in the
surveillance area.
III. METHOD
The design and development of Autonomous Drone is
divided into 3 parts: Structural design and control unit, structure
and control unit assembly, functional design and driver
installation.
1.) Structural design and control unit.
Therefore, the structure must be able to prevent collisions or
bumps in the event of tracking an intruder and the structure
must be able to protect against intrusion from intruders, which
is the goal of the design of the structure and control unit.
From Fig. 1 number 1 is structure of control base and Number
2 is structure of camera detection.
1.1.2) Middle structure design.
The design of the central structure is that which supports the
flight controller and propulsion unit. The central structure
firstly consists of a base that supports the flight controller and
equipment. There is a rectangular bracket, size 40x40x78 mm,
divided into upper and lower parts, assembled using M5 and
M2.5 screws and nuts. There will be 6 sets of 20 mm. holes in
the middle when assembled in order to hold the base of the
flight controller and equipment, and serves to hold six 20 mm
diameter hollow cylindrical carbon fiber arms of the
Autonomous Drone in the middle, with a length of 350 mm
each. The arm has a motor mount, divided into upper and lower
parts, assembled using 6 M3 screws and fixing the motor with
M2.5 screws, as shown below:

1.1) The design of the structure and control unit is designed

to be used in surveillance of intrusion into the surveillance area.

1.1.1) Upper structure design

The design of the upper structure is a structure that supports
the intrusion detection control unit, consisting of the base
structure bracket which supports the control board and the
detector camera bracket. In the design of the bracket design, the
control board support structure is designed by designing 2 legs
that are attached to the control board support base, allowing
modification to the size of the control board support base in case
of needing additional equipment. It has a rectangular shape of
100x110x35 millimeters to support a control board with 4
mounting holes of 3 millimeters in size. In the camera mounting Fig. 2 The design of the central structure.
structure, the detector is a rectangular structure of 29x108x34
millimeters. The camera is fixed with M5 screws. Connect the
From Fig. 2 number 1 is base for the flight control and
wires to the control board, as shown below:
equipment, number 2 is fastener of the arm, number 3 is the
motor fastener and number 4 are the carbon fiber arm. Number:
2, 3 and 4 have six per each.

1.1.3) Bottom structure design.

The lower structure is the part that attaches to the carbon fiber
arm of the Autonomous Drone. It serves as a collision buffer
and landing leg for Autonomous Drone. It uses a bracket that is
divided into 3 parts: the upper part, the middle part and the
lower part. The upper and middle sections are filled with 12
solid carbon fiber rods, 5 mm in diameter, 340 mm long, used
as autonomous drone collision protection. The lower part is the
landing leg of the aircraft, as shown below:

Fig. 1 The design of the upper structure.

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Fig. 3 Design of the lower structure.
From Fig. 3 the design of lower structure number 1 is the
clogged fiber carbon, number 2 is the seize for the carbon fiber
and number three is the stand of the autonomous drone.
When all the design parts are put together, the Autonomous
Drone has a hexagonal shape of 800x800x300 millimeters, with
a side protection structure and a base for the control board and
camera, as shown below:
Fig. 4 The design of the structure of the Autonomous Drone.
1.1) Control unit design.
The Autonomous Drone is divided into two parts: a flight
control unit and an intruder detection camera control unit. The
flight control unit is responsible for the automatic flight control
of the UAV consisting of the Flight Control Board, the BLCD
Motor which is a driver for the Autonomous Drone to move
together with ESC Module, the GPS Module which is a GPS
receiver used to locate and receiver for the 2.4 GHz signal sent
from the remote control All are installed in the upper part of the
Autonomous Drone central structure, as shown below:
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Fig. 5 Flight control design.
The intruder detection camera control unit consists of
camera control board and camera body. The intruder detection
camera control unit detects persons entering the surveillance
area from patrolling the area or exploring the desired area by
working with the flight control, as shown below:
Fig. 6 The design of the intruder detection camera control unit.
The Autonomous Drone is controlled by a flight controller
connected to the intruder detection camera control module. The
flight control unit will connect to the equipment needed to
automate the movement of the Autonomous Drone that receives
signals from the camera control unit in case an intruder is
detected in the surveillance area, in order to make notifications
to the relevant staff via the application, as shown below:
 2023 8th International Conference on Business and Industrial Research
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Fig. 7 Autonomous Drone Control Unit Connection Diagram.
2.) Structure and control unit assembly.
The structure of the Autonomous Drone was created using a
3D printer, including the axis mount, motor mount, intruder
detection camera control base, crash barrier and landing leg. It
is assembled using the core of the arm and the bumper arm in
carbon fiber. Install the flight control board together with the
equipment on the central structure and the surveillance camera
control board with the camera installed on the upper structure.
The position of the camera is attached to the base of the central
structure below to clearly detect intruders, as shown below:
Fig. 8 Autonomous Drone.
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3.) Functional design and driver installation.
The operation of the Autonomous Drone is divided into two
parts: the flight control part, the detection and warning camera
control part. The flight control is used to explore the specified
route or fly to the desired point. There are 3 modes of operation:
Stabilizer, Loiter and Auto. In Stabilizer and Loiter mode, it is
manual control. Users can control the Autonomous Drone by
themselves, while in Auto mode, it flies along a predetermined
waypoint.
Autonomous Drone, the purpose of which is to survey or
monitor a given area, requires the use of Auto mode as the main
mode of operation. But if there is a problem or the user wants
to control it, it can be adjusted to Stabilizer or Loiter mode
immediately. by detecting the use of cameras to detect people
If a person is found entering the surveillance area, it will send a
signal to the camera control board to notify the application and
the flight control board.
In the Autonomous Drone the ground station control uses the
Mission Planner program to configure the equipment used in
conjunction with the flight control board. By connecting to the
camera control board, the Autonomous Drone to move along a
predetermined waypoint, as shown below:
Fig. 9 Flow chart of Mission Planner program.
Intrusion detection uses the Roboflow platform to upload a
person's image to annotate, then use preprocessing and
augmentations to add data and generate a dataset, then training
models to apply to the intruder detection camera control unit
and install it. Libraries to allow the control board to be
connected to the camera to detect people with notifications
through the application, as shown below:
Fig. 10 Person detection and notification via application.
 2023 8th International Conference on Business and Industrial Research
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IV. TESTING
The Autonomous Drone test is divided into 3 parts. The first
part is a manual flight test by using Stabilizer and Loiter modes
to control the Autonomous Drone to move in 8 directions, as
shown below:
Fig. 11 Results of manual flight tests in Stabilizer and Loiter
mode.
From the results of the manual flight test It was found that
the operation in Stabilizer mode was accurate 97.50% and that
the operation in Loiter mode was accurate95.00%. Loiter mode
was slower than the Stabilizer mode but still able to work.
The second part is an automatic flight test using Auto mode,
placing the waypoint in a straight line start from point (A) go to
point (B) then from point (B) back to point (A at the height of
3 meters, 50 meters, 100 meters, 150 meters and 200 meters to
test the operation and compare the position of the waypoint
points the Autonomous Drone autonomously moves a certain
distance, as shown below:
Fig. 12 Results of automatic flight test in Auto mode.
From the test results, it was found that the Autonomous
Drone moving along the waypoint in a straight line back and
forth had a distance of 50 meters with an accuracy of 98.50%,
a distance of 100 meters with an accuracy of 96.00%, a distance
of 150 meters has an accuracy of 93.50% and a distance of 200
meters has an accuracy of 90.00%
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The third part is an automatic flight test in Auto mode,
together with detecting people around the surveillance area at
the destination point and alerting via the application, placing the
waypoint point in a straight line back and forth at a height of 3
meters, a test distance of 50 meters, 100 meters, 150 meters and
200 meters, then change the height to 4 meters and 5 meters
respectively, as shown below:
Fig. 13 Results of test flight in Auto mode combined with
human detection and notification via application.
From test results Autonomous Drone in Auto mode
combined with detection of people in the surveillance area at
the destination point and alerting via an application at a height
of 3 meters. The average detection and alerting accuracy is
97.00%, at a height of 4 m the average detection and alerting
accuracy was 92.75%, and at 5 meters the average detection and
alerting accuracy is 90.25%.
V. CONCLUSION and DISCUSSION
From the Design and Development of Autonomous Drone to
Detect and Alert Intruders in Surveillance Areas the researcher
encountered several problems, with the solutions listed as
follows. As for the structural design, the problem found in the
parts built with the 3D printer was the collapse of the workpiece
due to the pressure of the screws that held it, causing the
researcher to change injection rate to 60% in the problem parts.
Due to the fact that the design must be assembled together in
many parts, it caused problems due to discrepancies in the
dimensions and fasteners, which made assembly impossible.
The researcher's solution is to design a new one where each part
is assembled in a CAD program to see the details of the
dimensions beforehand in order to be able to complete the
assembly.
In manual flight tests, it was found that while both Stabilizer
Mode and Loiter Mode can be successfully used to direct the
drone, Stabilizer Mode had a higher average accuracy of
97.50% and was therefore more responsive than Loiter Mode.
When testing in Auto mode and flying by waypoint, it was
found that the movement of the autonomous drone
automatically deviates from the set point. In flight at a test
distance of 50 meters, the average accuracy was 98.50%, and at
 2023 8th International Conference on Business and Industrial Research
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the test distance of 200 meters, the lowest average accuracy was
90.00%. Alert through an application at a height of 3 meters can
detect a person with the highest average accuracy of 97.00%
and at a height of 5 meters can detect a person with the least
average accuracy of 90.25% This was observed in the Auto
mode flight test, where the detection of persons in the
surveillance area accounted for the detection range of the
UAV's camera. In order to detect correctly, the drone must be
kept within a distance suitable for the detection camera used and
the speed of the autonomous drone must also be kept within the
suitable range.
In the future, the researchers want to develop an autonomous
drone that can detect objects used as weapons in order to
provide information to the authorities, as well as having safety
systems to observe those entering the surveillance area. Making
an autonomous drone which can assess the situation for
violence in order to notify the relevant officers with clear and
accurate information for planning, tracking and arresting
perpetrators will deter violent crimes and be an effective
prevention strategy. The introduction of this innovation will
enable officers to develop appropriate and timely solutions to
current problems and events as they arise.
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