Building a UAV

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TriggerRenegade

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For my Senior Seminar project, I wish to build a Unmanned Aerial Vehicle.

I want to following features in the UAV

-GPS
-Autopilot
-Altitude hold
-Waypoints
-Landing (maybe)

I was wondering if I could complete this project in 60 hours or less

Could someone please walk me through the steps needed to build one?
 
Sixty hours seems a quite a bit too short.

Do you have the airplane already built? Are you experienced in flying such models? How big a model do you intend to have? How much of the equipment do you want to buy vs. make?

John
 
I also think that 60 hours is a bit short.

You may need some accelerometers. The GPS response is slow and so you may have the vehicle in an unrecoverable dive before the GPS notices.

I see the steps as:-

You need a microcontroller, so find out how to program those if you don't already know.

Connect some sort of display or readout to the microcontroller so that you can see what is going on. Test that.

You need to find a GPS receiver. We use the Haicom HI- 204III-PSII. I recommend using RS232 not USB. Connect the GPS receiver to the microcontroller. Program the microcontroller to send the something from the GPS to the display and check that you get sense out of it.

Do the same with the accelerometers.

Wire the microcontroller to the servos, and check that you can drive them over all the range you need.

Write some code to keep the vehicle level and see if that works. Then write code for all the other movements. Then use the GPS readings to alter the set points for the heading, roll, rate of climb etc.

That looks like what you need to do.

Have a dustpan and brush ready for mistakes!
 
@Blueroom: Robotics/Electronics 4. I have to build something that "reflects my accumulative knowledge"

@Driver: Thank you for your advice, but I was hoping to skip most of the programming. Perhaps I could use something like this?

**broken link removed**

or something like this

**broken link removed**
 
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60 hours is short. I would go for a flight stabilizer (IR-based, NOT gyro based which requires extra investment and processing complexity which your limitations and timeline will greatly limit).

Just aim for making the system be able to hold a constant bank angle (a fixed roll angle ) with fixed elevator pitch so that the plane flies in a circle on it's own (human pilot to take off and land). It may not seem like it, but that alone would wow a lot of people.

Use a flat foam flyer, or a slow/park flyer based wings bolted to a stick. They are cheap, easy to build, easy to fly, easy to land and usually stable. You don't want it too nimble because IR thermopiles can have a enough response time that the agility of the plane is too high and you get oscillations due to the phase delay produced.

https://www.electro-tech-online.com/custompdfs/2008/09/horizon_sensing_autopilot.pdf
 
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dknguyen said:
60 hours is short. I would go for a flight stabilizer (IR-based, NOT gyro based which requires extra investment and processing complexity which your limitations and timeline will greatly limit).
Click to expand...

Doesn't PicoPilot take care of that?
 
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So basically you need to program some micro computers and wire them into the plane, in so doing creating an autopilot?
If so how automatic does it have to be ?
You might be able to controll it using a flight simulator programm? If you used s RF or WiFi signal for the simulation program to control it from the computer.

Just an Idea
 
jpanhalt said:
What does buying an RTF Predator from the US Army prove?
Click to expand...

Well, I'm not just buying it and assembling it straight up, there will be some programming, such as calibrating the GPS and Altitude hold to the plane, and inputting waypoints. The whole purpose of this project is basically a flexing of "electronic muscles"


The microcomputers just need to altitude and follow GPS way points. I will take care of take-off and landing. My controlls with be a 4 channel RF remote control. However, I won't be using a flight simulator program because it might eat up too much time. I have a time constraint of 60 hours. If I had more time, your idea would be certainly considered. Thank you for the help anyways =]
 
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