In January, the web-based company Amazon announced that it wants to deliver goods from their warehouses using miniaturized, unmanned, multirotor aircraft. Pick an item from their store, choose Prime Air delivery, and 20 minutes later, the item shows up on your lawn. Is it possible? Is it feasible? Flying robots? It sounds absurd unless you understand how they work. If you want to know how they do it, come down to room H-14 on a Wednesday after school and step into the future.
Students in the model aviation club are building an autonomous flying quadrotor with similar capabilities. The device is the size of a medium pizza box and holds roughly the same amount of electronics as your average smart phone. The club isn’t delivering pizzas or books with the device, but they will use it in a competition on April 26th at Montgomery County Community College. Students will compete in a quadrotor challenge that encourages teams to use open-source software and existing technology to complete a series of challenges. Teams will earn points for completing successful autonomous flight, transmitting photos wirelessly of a targeted area, demonstrating safe operations, and repeating missions successfully.
The quadrotor took approximately six hours to build, although it is not ready for flight. At the club’s next meeting on March 19th, they hope to have their first test flight. Between now and the competition, they’ll continue tweaking and testing the quadrotor to meet the requirements. Sophomores, Mark Wallace and Shaker Mursalin are excited to see the device by itself. Both students are heavily interested in model aircraft and take engineering courses at the high school. Usually club members fly the aircraft with a remote, giving it directions by pushing the sticks on the remote. This time the remote is a pre-loaded program from the computer. Students can even program the quadrotor to follow them by holding the tablet and going for a walk.
It’s not all computer-based. Sending the aircraft into the air will require both human and computer input. Once airborne, the pilot will flip a switch on the transmitter, placing the quadrotor into autonomous mode. After it completes the desired flight plan, the pilot will manually land the quadrotor.
Programming for this project is as easy as clicking on a pre-loaded map, choosing an altitude, and choosing a direction. Information will be wirelessly sent back to a tablet through telemetry module, providing students with flight data such as, airspeed, location, direction, altitude, and battery voltage. Students plan on connecting a camera and streaming live video back to their ground station to watch the flight live in person.
The North Penn Model Aviation Club has never ventured this deep into quadrotors. However, last year, NPTV and the model aviation club teamed up to build a camera equipped quad. Thanks to the support from Bob Gillmer, director of communications for North Penn, the club was able to build and test a quad. They equipped it with a small camera and took in flight video clips of the high school graduation. You will likely see them flying a few at graduation this year. However, don’t expect them to deliver your diploma if you can’t make it that night.
This project would not be possible without the generous support provided by Montco’s QuadForge program. The club is advised by Dr. Michael Voicheck, the founder of the club.
