Contact:

Contact: Prof. C.T. Avedisian

Phone: 255-5105

Office: 193 Grumman Hall

Design of a Radio Controlled Micro-Air Vehicle: autonomous control; on-board imaging; and scale-down to a 6 inch span airplane

If you have interests in model airplanes (building and flying radio controlled model airplanes), working with tiny electric motors, interest in small rechargeable and primary battery technologies, autonomous control of a micro powered aircraft, and/or want to work with the latest technology in micro-electrical mechanical systems (MEMS) for remote control, you'll like this project. The military has interest in developing a micro-air vehicle (MAV) that is small, lightweight, easy to fly and is manueverable.

We will design a micro air vehicle (MAV) that can be controlled by an on-board video with long flight times; and outfit a similar design to fly autonomously using ‘global positionoing corrdinate’ control. There is flexibility in the design. We might purchase a design and modify it, or do an original design. By 'micro' we mean a plane or helicopter with a wing span of less than 20 inches. By 'long' flight times we mean a half hour or more (this is still considerably shorter than our history-making flight in January of 3 hours in Barton Hall for a remotely controlled and electric powered airplane). We want to extend the micro-electrical technology to a more practical aircraft that can fly outdoors and be controlled by a video camera. The MAV may include a micro-video camera for control, one or more motors for power, servos for control, and electronic speed controllers. The intent is to explore the limits of the existing technology on motor, batteries, electronic speed control and micro-video systems for long duration electric flight.

This project has many different elements that might appeal to you: designing a MAV structure; building model airplanes; measuring the performance of electric motors to examine their performance curves; experimenting with different battery technologies to measure their discharge characteristics; and autonomous flight control. A project could be formed around any one of these aspects.

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