Newbie to UAV's, Good project for college robot team?

[sburck]

First let me say that this is my first post on this board.

I am a mechanical engineering student at Trinity College in hartford CT,

We have a robot team here which I am involved in:

http://storage1.cs.trincoll.edu/robotteam/seagull/www/

Most of the projects here are part of the trinity college firefighting contest, as it is an internationally famous contest and since we host it most of our robotics projects are associated with the fire fighting contest.

The only project we have that is not involved in the firefighting contest is a fully autonomus ground robot named Q.




Any way enough beating around the bush, I have always loved the idea of r/c airplanes, and when I was about 15 i got into it with a few sailplanes however I didnt have the time, the money, or the paitence to get it all right, however I am intrested again as I am older, I have more money to burn, and I can incorperate this field into my major.

I am very curious about building a UAV because it is at the cutting edge of todays technology, it flys which is always cool, it has many uses in the real world, and frankly it's alot more exciting then little toaster oven sized robots that fart around through a little maze.

I am wondering should I jump back into r/c flight before I consiter UAV's, will learning how to build, fly, and getting familiar with the electronic control systems in r/c airplanes get me on the road to being prepaired to work on UAV's? I am mainly a mechanical engineer but the robotics team is mainly electrical engineers, and we have many students and professors whose specialty is designing and building sensor systems.

[hg1]

There have been a few discussions on rcgroups along these lines. As a starting point, take a look at -

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=757716
http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=743091

There's actually a lot of activity in this area, particularly around open source autopilots and open source quad rotor projects. Once you narrow down whether you want to pursue a hovering vs cruising approach, you should ask for more specific guidance - you'll get a lot of feedback.

[sburck]

thanks for the reply,

I am interested in a fixed wing aircraft, specificly somthing along the lines of a sailplane, possibly eventually with the capability to sense thermals within given gps coordinates, allowing the aircraft to stay airborn for long periods of time on its own.

Also I am not very technology friendly, so what exactly do you mean by open source.

And lastly would learning about r/c flight be a good entry point into model uav's?

[hg1]

Here's a somewhat datad list of links - maybe someone has a more current list -
http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=358497

This is a good example of an "open source" project -
http://www.gnu.org/non-gnu/paparazzi/

Beyond that, set aside 4-6 hours to read through various posts on this forum as well as the aerial photography branch on rcgroups. It probably will feel a bit overwhelming at first, because there's a LOT going on, but you have to start somewhere.

[macboffin]

Certainly get to the point where you have built, or at any rate assembled from ARTF a trainer type R/C plane and learnt to fly it reliably ; what you learn from this about model flight will be invaluable when it comes to designing and putting together the equipment necessary for autonomous flight. If that trainer is a reasonable size, say .40 powered, it should have the payload ability for a modest but sufficient GPS based autopilot system and a "live" video downlink. Having learnt to fly the trainer, try progressively adding ballast,(centered around the normal Centre of Gravity), and get used to the modified flight characteristics, ie slightly higher stall speed, longer take off etc. Then you are safe to put your equipment investment into the plane and experiment.Figure on using radio gear with fail-safe facility ; a servo operated by the fail-safe turns the onboard gear on when you turn your TX off, turns the onboard stuff off and restores live control when you turn your TX on again.
Can't recommend too highly this approach ; I see many posts in this and allied forums about folks who want to mess with UAVs, are knowlegeable about electronics, but have little or no experience with the actual operation and control of model or larger aircraft, and are therefore starting with the dice loaded against them. Good luck with the project, but expect it to take some time!

[dmgoedde]

I second what has been written previously: learn all about 'normal' R/C flight first. It will stack the dice in your favor. Don't be afraid to start very very simple. There is so much you can learn about autopilots and UAVs before you get ready to put something in the air. In my experience there are many building blocks and plateuas of learning you'll have to achieve along the way.

I attached a bunch of pictures of my journey at the beginning (last year). I hope this benefits you. It may look simple, but I assure you there are many small things to learn and overcome. I did this wothout any knowledge of this forum or outside influence, so perhaps you'll have a quicker experience than I did. There are tons of great people on RCGroups.

When you begin approaching the autonomous side of things, I found it useful to first figure out how to drive an R/C truck on the ground by GPS coordinates. This is very low risk, and by accomplishing this you will have a toolbox of skills including: how to generate pulses and control servos, how to parse GPS strings, the basic navigation math, how to do the closed-loop control between taking a stream of GPS coordinates and calculating how to steer to intersect the waypoints. An R/C truck driven by GPS is actually not all that simple for a beginner, and may humble you at first. Again, it is very low risk for your precious equipment. I saved $$ by buying a non-R/C wire-controlled electric toy truck at Wal-mart for $14.99, and hacking it by adding a $12 speed control for brushed motors, and modifying the front wheel linkages to accept a standard servo. I started with an EM-406 GPS from sparkfun.com, and a "Board of Education" from Parallax for the simple microcontroller with built-in breadboard. It is definately enought to get your feet wet.

I'd be happy to help you more directly if you want.

Dean

[S_Dave]

Sburck,

You might want to look into the model aircraft "design-build-fly" contests for college teams. There are several really good ones and your school could get some really good experience and learn a lot from them. We helped a team this year that was in a USAF contest and they got well funded to buy all their parts, etc. There is the SAE Aero Design contest:
http://students.sae.org/competitions/aerodesign/

We helped judge these teams and their planes, and got to watch the fly off. It seems to me to be a fantastic experience--win or lose--and the students really got a lot out of it. Maybe some of your team would be interested in this in parallel with your other design interest... Good luck and happy landings!

Macboffin and Dmgoedde--great posts and really good advice. You guys are
mentors.

CHeers,

Dave

[sburck]

thank you for all of the replys. I have atleast a year before officially starting this interms of our robot team. I am currently building my mad highlander epp sailplane which was sitting on the shelf for years. My priority at this point is to learn how to fly r/c. I am also learning about building with composate materials. Hopefully after I get this r/c stuff down better I can hook up with some EE's and comp sci majors and start exploring sensor options and get some input from them.