78 research outputs found

    Method to Develop a Control System for a Stable and Guidable Hybrid Projectile

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    A Hybrid Projectile (HP) is a munition that transforms into an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) after being launched from a tube. In many situations it is desirable for this type of projectile to change its point of impact and depart from its current ballistic trajectory similar to a UAV following a path. A method was created to utilize deflectable control surfaces in conjunction with a guidance system to ensure the HP was statically and dynamically stable and to maneuver the HP to a desired point of impact. Methods were devised to control heading and pitch using vertical and horizontal tail surfaces. Testing and tuning these control methods were done using the Six Degree of Freedom (6DoF) system in Simulink. A cruciform tail section was utilized so that the HP could be statically and dynamically stable. The simulation showed that the method devised was able to guide a 40 mm HP up to 6250 projectile diameters off of the line of fire and increase range by 25.8% while landing within 125 projectile diameters of the desired impact point

    Eye in the Sky

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    This project is separated into two parts: an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and a corresponding capsule. The UAV will be stored in the capsule as the pair is released from underwater and floats to the surface where the capsule will autonomously open and discharge the drone. Following release, the UAV will fly up and record video surveillance of the surrounding area. Finally, the UAV will record the data onto a micro SD card inserted in the monitor that shows the camera’s live feed. The objective is to design, build, test, and finalize a UAV and capsule that meet NUWC’s, the customer, specifications as much as possible. The overarching design for this system consists of a cylindrical capsule with chambers for the drone, electronic controls, controlled air flow, and the tank of compressed air. An Arduino UNO is programmed to trigger the flow of air that pushes the drone out after a certain number of seconds. The UAV is a quadcopter whose arms spread open by a simple spring mechanism once ejected from the capsule but sits linearly while inside the capsule. The capsule has been manufactured from aluminum and the drone uses the Vortex 250 Pro as a base but has been modified to feature the required fold-able arms. Testing has shown that the capsule functions as expected. It floats to the surface, maintains a vertical position, and ejects the UAV after the programmed number of seconds. Testing has also shown that the UAV’s physical body also functions as expected in terms of its arms springing open when no longer constrained within the capsule. Photos and videos have been successfully recorded onto the monitor. The drone’s flight was not tested due to unforeseen and currently unresolved software issues. Overall, if the drone was capable of flight, the team would expect the system to work well as a whole

    Autonomous Campus Mobility Platform

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    This Major Qualifying Project (MQP) is based around the development of a robotic vehicle for use in improving mobility. The main objective was to create an autonomous vehicle capable of navigating a person or cargo back and forth from Higgins Laboratory on the Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) main campus to the Robotics Laboratory located at 85 Prescott Street, approximately 0.6 miles away. An autonomous robot was uniquely designed as a personal mobility platform to navigate its environment using onboard navigation and sensing system

    Design of an Autonomous Hovering Miniature Air Vehicle as a Flying Research Platform

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    This thesis, by developing a Miniature Aerial Vehicle (MAV) hovering platform, presents a practical solution to allow researchers and students to implement their theoretical methods for guidance and navigation in the real world. The thesis is not concerned with the development of guidance and navigation algorithms, nor is it concerned with the development of external sensors. There have been some recent advances in guidance and navigation towards developing algorithms and simple sensors for MAVs. The task of developing a platform to test such advancements is the subject of this thesis. It is considered a difficult and time consuming process due to the complexities of autonomous flight control and the strict size, weight and computational requirements of this type of system. It would be highly beneficial to be able to buy a platform specifically designed for this task that already possesses autonomous hovering capability and the expansion connectivity for interfacing your own custom developed sensors and algorithms. Many biological and computer scientists would jump at the opportunity to maximize their research by real world implementation. The development of such a system is not a trivial task. It requires a great deal of understanding in a broad range of fields including; Aeronautical, Microelectronic, Mechanical, Computer and Embedded Software Engineering in order to create a successful prototype. The challenge of this thesis was to design a research platform to enable easy implementation of external sensors and guidance algorithms, in a real world environment for research and education. The system is designed so it could be used for a broad range of testing experiments. After extensive research in current MAV and avionics design it became obvious in several areas the best available products were not sufficient to meet the needs of the proposed platform. Therefore it was necessary to custom design and build; sensors, a data acquisition system and a servo controller. The latter two products are available for sale by Jimonics (www.jimonics.com). It was then necessary to develop a complete flight control system with integrated sensors, processor and wireless communications network which is called ‘The MicroBrain’. ‘The MicroBrain’ board measures only 45mm x 35mm x 11mm and weighs ~11 grams. The coaxial contra-rotating MAV platform design provides a high level of mechanical stability to help minimise the control system complexity. The platform was highly modified from a commercially available remotely controlled helicopter. The system incorporates a novel collision protection system that was designed to also double as a mounting place for external sensors around its perimeter. The platform equipped with ‘The MicroBrain’ is capable of fully autonomous hover. This provides a great base for testing guidance and navigational sensors and algorithms by decoupling the difficult task of platform design and low-level stability control. By developing a platform with these capabilities the researcher can now focus on the guidance and navigation task, as the difficulties in developing a custom platform have been taken care of. This therefore promotes a faster evolution of guidance and navigational control algorithms for MAVs

    Design And Development Of An Insect-Inspired Micro Air Vehicle

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    Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs) are now an active research focus that has caught attention from global talents. With its’ small size, MAVs have considerable potential to be capable of performing missions such as environmental monitoring, surveillance and assessment in hostile situation. Through the process of mimicking insect flight, however, researchers from both in educational institution and industry are facing a lot of challenges such as instability of the air vehicle during the hovering, the maneuverability, the propulsive efficiency due to miniaturization. The objective is to innovate an efficient four-winged FW-MAV platform with better payload carrying capability, where human can allocate important payloads on the FW-MAV during environmental monitoring and indoor surveillance missions. Using Computer Aided Design (CAD) software SolidWorks, the FW-MAVs’ wing and tail are designed. With the allocated time and financial support, two wings are developed using traditional cut and glue method and advanced vacuum mold method. Avionics connection is tested before assembling with the wing and tail. Flight test and vertical thrust measurement are conducted on FW-MAV to compare the performance of different wings and different model at full throttle maximum speed. In general, the FW-MAV produces maximum vertical thrust at 10° angle of attack. Wing which has the stiffeners and manufactured using vacuum mold produces the highest thrust compare with other wings. Possible future work is to optimize the tail design and control algorithm in order to achieve hovering flight

    Putting the power in ‘socio-technical regimes’ – e-mobility transition in China as political process

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    A mobility low-carbon transition is a key issue both socially and for mobilities research. The multi-level perspective (MLP) is justifiably a leading approach in such research, with important connections to high-profile socio-technical systemic analyses within the mobilities paradigm. The paper explores the key contributions that a Foucauldian-inspired cultural political economy (CPE) offers, going beyond central problems with the MLP, specifically regarding: a productive concept of power that affords analysis of the qualitatively novel and dynamic process of transition; and the incorporation of the exogenous ‘landscape’ into the analysis. This move thus resonates with growing calls for attention to power dynamics in mobilities research and a ‘structural’ turn. In making this case, we deploy the key case study of contemporary efforts towards mobility transition in China. This not only sets out more starkly the importance of MLP’s gaps but also provides an empirical case to illustrate, albeit in the form of informed speculation, possible routes to low-carbon urban mobility transition and the inseparability from broader qualitative power transitions at multiple scales, including the global

    Unmanned aerial systems as a revolutionary tool in modern armed conflicts

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    More than a century has passed since the third dimension of space (airspace) has become an important place where combat and non-combat activities take place. The ability of the Air Force to carry out a wide range of content of combat operations and other activities from the airspace ensured the development of new qualitative characteristics of modern armed conflicts. The absence of physical limitations, high maneuverability and dynamism, short reaction time, as well as the high intensity of actions carried out by the Air Force, have enabled these forces to have strategic importance in armed conflicts since the Second World War. In parallel with the development of civilization and the emergence of qualitatively new technologies, rapidly improved technological solutions are being developed, which are changing the way of life of people around the world, improving it literally day by day. Each technological generation brings a new level of civilizational development, leading to the symbiosis of man as a human being and modern technical and technological means. Undoubtedly, this is also the case with the development of modern weapon systems and equipment used in armed conflicts. This is also the case with the revolutionary development of new weapon systems in air forces around the world. The development of modern weapons in the air force is best seen through the development of unmanned aerial platforms (unmanned aerial vehicles). The development of these assets is a consequence of the industrial revolution of the fourth generation and the importance of these platforms in the realization of tasks in modern armed conflicts is almost immeasurable. Namely, every conflict brings exponential development of these assets, both in technical and tactical sense. The development of these means in modern armed conflicts is a continuous process that is realized on the basis of previous experiences from the tactical use of unmanned aerial vehicles in concrete combat actions. There is no doubt that the technological progress of these means is something that in the future will enable the almost unlimited use of these aircraft in the execution of a wide variety of tasks without minimal danger to human life. This paper, whose main goal is to describe the unmanned aerial vehicle as a tool for the execution of a wide range of tasks in an unlimited war format, consists of three chapters in addition to the introduction and conclusion. In the first chapter, the theoretical determination of the unmanned aerial vehicle as a weapon-equipment system was made. In the second chapter, the use of unmanned aerial vehicles is analyzed on the examples of armed conflicts in Syria and Nagorno-Karabakh. In the third chapter, an analysis of potential aviation patterns of unmanned aerial vehicles and loitering munition (also known as a suicide drone or kamikaze drone) in combat operations was carried out

    Design of a fast crew transfer vehicle to Mars

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    A final report is made on the trajectory and vehicle requirements for a fast crew transfer vehicle to Mars which will complete an Earth to Mars (and Mars to Earth) transfer in 150 days and will have a stay time at Mars of 40 days. This vehicle will maximize the crew's effectiveness on Mars by minimizing detrimental physiological effects such as bone demineralization and loss of muscle tone caused by long period exposure to zero gravity and radiation from cosmic rays and solar flares. The crew transfer vehicle discussed will complete the second half of a Split Mission to Mars. In the Split Mission, a slow, unmanned cargo vehicle, nicknamed the Barge, is sent to Mars ahead of the crew vehicle. Once the Barge is in orbit around Mars, the fast crew vehicle will be launched to rendezvous with the Barge in Mars orbit. The vehicle presented is designed to carry six astronauts for a mission duration of one year. The vehicle uses a chemical propulsion system and a nuclear power system. Four crew modules, similar to the proposed Space Station Common Modules, are used to house the crew and support equipment during the mission. The final design also includes a command module that is shielded to protect the crew during radiation events
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