UCL DroneX Team 2020

Team Members:

Aadam Saheed
Dhaval Patel
Jaineel Parekh
Umar Saleem

Supervisor

Dr Will Newton

The Project

The Unmanned Air Systems (UAS) competition is run by the Institute of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE). It requires students to undertake the full design and build cycle of a UAS for a simulated natural disaster scenario in which payload delivery, marker search and speed trial challenges are incorporated. Overall, this project aims to maximise scoring ability at the competition through optimising aircraft performance in line with the highest scoring areas of the challenge. The core mission is to pick up aid supplies from a forward base and to deliver as much aid as possible at a Drop Zone (DZ) via defined Way Points (WP) within a specified time limit.

The Design

Our design is a quadrotor autonomous aircraft which are extremely agile allowing simple and fast take-off, landing and hovering. The aircraft weighs 3.9kg with a payload carrying capacity of 3kg, also employing a servo release mechanism for accurate automatic payload release. Carbon fibre sheet and box section are used for construction of the frame making it light and stiff whilst also being cheap and simple to manufacture. A high-performance computer and camera system are carried onboard to allow autonomous identification of ground markers for reconnaissance. The footprint of the aircraft is small at 280x280mm and is equipped with folding propellers allowing it to pack down into a manageable carry case for easy transport.