rrTV-PHOTO   New HD TV
HOME   rrTV-PHOTO   GALLERIES   MY GALLERY   HELP-FAQ
myHOME PM pmRR MEMBERS 691 ONLINE 19 EVENTS SEARCH REGISTER  START HERE
 
1 page1254 viewsPOST REPLY
Autography FlightPower . Advantage Hobby . Revolution Models

.
.
UAV Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles > Senior Design Project
 
 
lavarocks
Senior Heliman
Location: Rochester, NY

A kid I work with is involved with a Senior Design project at his college. They plan to design a system for a helicopter to takeoff, fly to and from multiple waypoints, and land without human intervention. It should send live video to an on ground operator or technician. I am looking for some concrete feedback from those with experience with this. This is a direct quote from a Project Proposal..

"Scope: The scope of this project is to create a prototype UAV that will fly between waypoints with no inputs from the ground crew. Navigation system options can include, but are not limited to, global positioning systems (GPS), radio navigation (RNAV) systems, or inertial navigation systems (INS). A proof-of-concept low resolution video camera will send live images to the ground crew. Scope will be increased or decreased based on as of yet unknown budgets and timetables.

Budget: This budget is an example of some available devices. Since the budget is not yet set, this can change based on the sponsor, new concepts, or different technologies. These costs are only startup costs. Operating costs would be very low, with fuel being the only major expense.

Airframe: $500
GPS: $100
RNAV: $1000
INS: $250
Camera: $250
Microcontroller: $100
Total:~$2200"

I already told him no way with that kind of budget and literally no piloting or building experience, but whatever you guys can tell me about how much they are actually looking at spending and how long it would take to do this would be great.

- chuckyteets
08-02-2006 Over year old.
 
 
dgshaffer
Elite Veteran
Location: New Jersey

I've got that much into my EVO 50. I only wish it could be smart enough to avoid the earth, much less obsticals.
08-02-2006 Over year old.
 
 
dredevil
Senior Heliman
Location: New Oxford,Pa US

I think you need two more zeros.
08-02-2006 Over year old.
HOMEPAGE  
 
 
Doug
Elite Veteran
Location: Naples Florida....

Yep, two more zeros and there will be enough for burgers as well

It will take 90% of the budget for the first 90% of the project and the other 90% of the money for the last 10% of the project and, it will take ten time longer than you think.
08-02-2006 Over year old.
 
 
jdowns
Heliman
Location: San Diego, CA

This kinda reminds me of that scene in "Back to School" where the business professor is giving his lecture on making widgets to the class... When asked, "What's a widget?" he responds, "It's a fictional product!!! It doesn't matter!!!" Dangerfield answers, "Tell that to the bank..." The professor continues on with his cost estimation analysis to which Dangerfield finally interrupts with, "Oh... you left out a bunch'a stuff!!!"

I see the airframe listed, you'll also need an engine, rotor blades, muffler, battery pack, gyro, receiver, servos, transmitter, not to mention all the starter equipment ... Good luck finding a quality INS for $250... Camera's listed, but without the telemetry data link equipment, etc..., etc... And if he thinks that "fuel" will be the only major operating expense... I would remind him to include crash kits, replacement parts, replacement of fried out electronics, PCB design iterations, etc... somewhere up on that list...

Go sit in on the next senior design class like Mr. Thornton Melon and give this professor a small dose of reality...

- James
08-03-2006 Over year old.
 
 
lavarocks
Senior Heliman
Location: Rochester, NY

Thanks guys. I believe I underestimated how unclear it is to an "outsider" how in depth all of this is. Perhaps they should have investigated the actual "getting a helicopter to fly" aspect of it more before throwing out those figures... Especially because the helicopter will have to be large, and most likely gas powered for this application. I'm guessing they won't get very far with zero heli piloting/building/troubleshooting experience on the team, also. I'll have this thread forwarded to them and hopefully it will open their eyes and help them out.

Any other feedback is appreciated

- chuckyteets
08-03-2006 Over year old.
 
 
ScareCrow_Delta
Veteran
Location: Sebastian, FL

The physical aspects is the simple stuff (airframe, engine etc..) The real chalenge is to develop a program to process and fly the heli. It is very hard to develop an algorithm to hover a heli, none the less go to way points. Neural Robotics will be a good start. It will probably cost at least 100K for the beta testing and development. If it only cost $2200.00, it will be probably part of somebody's heli armada by now.

~~~~ Defy the laws of gravity....gracefully ~~~~
08-03-2006 Over year old.
HOMEPAGE  
 
 
Dakine
Elite Veteran
Location: OC, Commifornia

Keep that budget, you don't need to add two more zeros!

Once he completes the project, and it's got UAV capabilities, HE'LL CHARGE YOU with the extra two zeros.
08-05-2006 Over year old.
 
 
stickyfox
Key Veteran
Location: Troy, NY, US

I've worked with some much simpler autonomous vehicles (mostly, but not exclusively, non-flying). I've been thinking about a project like this for a while. I agree that this budget is too low, but I don't think it's much too low. Obviously I can't tell from the post what particular equipment they're picked out or how they intend to use it, but I found a couple things interesting.

There is, however, way more here than is needed for a capstone credit. You could make a master's thesis out of this project. Maybe they'd consider trimming it down to just one component?

By RNAV/INS, are they talking about traditional avionics instruments? I'm not crazy about that.. anything designed to go in a full-size craft will be way too heavy and require improbable amounts of electric power.

Has anyone looked into the exact method that would be used to control attitude? There are already some cheap solutions out there that use a variety of techniques; infrared horizon detection (a $200 hobby-store part) and ground-based image processing (available commercially for under $5k) come to mind. Each one has its own particular associated costs.

How about the MCU? There aren't too many under a hundred bucks (unless they've already got the development kit), and most limit available features to "academic" or "evaulation" versions that will put a serious hurt on this application. A couple examples are "no floating point," "4k maximum application size," or "assembler with free 90-day C compiler evaluation." You have to be very careful about what kit you choose. $200 will barely get you into the game.. they might even consider a lightweight computer like a PDA or mini PC motherboard. You can use SD or CF in place of a hard drive and run the whole thing off of 5V.

Piloting experience is not absolutely necessary. I say this only because I have visited a very popular university (which I will not name for reasons that should be apparent below ) with a very successful UAV project; there isn't a single pilot in the group. In fact, I was recently told that their only would-be aviators were suspended from their local AMA field after they flew over an interstate and hit a car parked almost a mile away.

I'd make a serious attempt at this kind of project for $7k-$10k. I think this is attainable for a senior design project. A friend of mine just finished his and spent three times that much. All he had at the end of the year was a wing.

-fox
08-06-2006 Over year old.
HOMEPAGE  
 
 
JasonF
Senior Heliman
Location: Northern VA

I would suggest that the student revise their project to simply attack this problem in simulation. This is a hard enough challenge as it is, and removes the difficulty of actually working with complicated and expensive hardware, learning to fly R/C, etc.

If this isn't challenging enough, then consider a hardware in the loop simulation. Only after successfully implementing these steps would you even bother putting this equipment on an R/C machine.
08-08-2006 Over year old.
 
 
SSN Pru
Elite Veteran
Location: Massachusetts

last year i completed my senior design project and we took home a 1st place trophy for most payload carried in the SAE AeroDesign Competition in micro class. Total cost: $400 dollars. albeit, the aircraft was human piloted but we managed to scrounge enough money to build it, and travel to the competition. the school provided us with 400 dollars to rent a vehicle and pay for gas along the way and that was it. we "found" the rest of the money and did stuff on the cheap. i was an experienced builder and pilot and the materials were donated by me and a friend in the hobby. where there is a will there is a way. the faculty at my school, UMass Dartmouth, didnt give an ice cubes chance in hell. they were wrong, now they all love us.

dont discourage people for trying to do something for a lot less than you think it could be done for. you dont know if they already have a motor, gyro, servos, receiver and such.

thats my take on the matter.


pru

If you avoid failure, you also avoid success.
09-08-2006 Over year old.
 
 
1 page1254 viewsPOST REPLY
CarbonXtreme . Midland Helicopters . HeliProz

.
.
UAV Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles > Senior Design Project
 PRINT TOPIC Advertisers 

Subscribe to This Topic

Tuesday, December 2 - 4:35 am - Copyright © 2000 - 2008 runryder.com | email | link to rr | runryder needs cookie