1. Supervising FacultyParticipants Dr. Kenneth D. MeaseBrett Andrews Charlie Chang Sabina Lin Gary Mark Shelley Notarnicola Mica Parks TJ Sirinopwongsagon Daniel Chen* Catherine Le* * Participating Junior T HE A UTONOMOUS F LYING V EHICLE 1

2. 2 GOAL STATEMENT Our goal is to design and build an unmanned aerial vehicle that is able to take-off and land vertically while flown autonomously by a computer. It may also take the place of a human rescue team in an unknown environment to identify the location of survivors, dead bodies, hazards to be avoided, and potential hazards.

3. 3 PROTOTYPE Based on past contest results, the primary problem is in vertical flight. To attack this problem, a prototype of a vertical take-off and landing air vehicle was built and flown to test the vertical flight and stability.

4. 4 AIRFRAME DESIGN A wind tunnel model of the craft body simulated to actual final design was tested to record the forces acting on it. A free-floating reflexive wing was also analyzed to reduce the amount of thrust needed to maintain in-transit flight in order to cut down the fuel consumption. An electric fan was added to simulate the airflow to enhance the modeling of realistic conditions.

5. 5 PATRAN PATRAN is a finite element analysis which can give us all kinds of element material properties. It can tell us the weak areas of the structure that will fail under certain loads. Modal Analysis of Valkyrie

6. 6 BASIC FRAME STRUCTURE The basic frame structure is constructed out of bass wood. All joints are glued together using Epoxy, and all major joints are re- enforced with carbon fiber strips.

7. 7 CONTROL SYSTEM Valkyrie is a completely computer-controlled craft with the ability to perform surveillance and reconnaissance tasks without the the need for a human pilot. Autonomous control is accomplished using a base station computer and a standard radio controller. We recently finished the base structure for the pitch, roll, thrust, and yaw controller programs using C/C++. These programs will use results obtained from a Matlab control system analysis using standard flight dynamics and control algorithms. The control processes will communicate their current status other sensor information with each other through shared memory. An I/O manager will perform all functions related to communication between the craft and the base computer. The I/O manager source code is still under development.

8. OFF-THE-SHELF RC DEVICES Receiver Gyro Mixer For V-Tail or Elevans Motor Controller Motor Diodes Roll and pitch control are mixed together as in a V-Tail or elevon control.

9. 8 GANTT CHART