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Full-Text Articles in Aeronautical Vehicles

Team F16: Autonomous Research Plane, Andrew Sugamele, Andrew Whitacre, Nicholas Toal, Cole Bushur Jun 2024

Team F16: Autonomous Research Plane, Andrew Sugamele, Andrew Whitacre, Nicholas Toal, Cole Bushur

Mechanical Engineering

The autonomous research plane is a remote-controlled plane used for both in-flight data collection and to explore new manufacturing methods for Design Build Fly, an engineering club on campus. The club does not have the resources or time to implement data collection for their competition plane, so we built a plane in parallel, following similar rules to mimic the work and schedule that the club would use during their season. We first did research and analysis to determine the structure of the plane, geometry of wings, sizing of the tail, and what airfoil to choose. The manufacturing process included making …


Autonomous Watercraft Simulation And Programming, Nicholas J. Savino May 2019

Autonomous Watercraft Simulation And Programming, Nicholas J. Savino

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

Automation of various modes of transportation is thought to make travel more safe and efficient. Over the past several decades advances to semi-autonomous and autonomous vehicles have led to advanced autopilot systems on planes and boats and an increasing popularity of self-driving cars. We simulated the motion of an autonomous vehicle using computational models. The simulation models the motion of a small-scale watercraft, which can then be built and programmed using an Arduino Microcontroller. We examined different control methods for a simulated rescue craft to reach a target. We also examined the effects of different factors, such as various biases …


Homography-Based State Estimation For Autonomous Exploration In Unknown Environments, Andres S. Chavez Armijos May 2018

Homography-Based State Estimation For Autonomous Exploration In Unknown Environments, Andres S. Chavez Armijos

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

This thesis presents the development of vision-based state estimation algorithms to enable a quadcopter UAV to navigate and explore a previously unknown GPS denied environment. These state estimation algorithms are based on tracked Speeded-Up Robust Features (SURF) points and the homography relationship that relates the camera motion to the locations of tracked planar feature points in the image plane. An extended Kalman filter implementation is developed to perform sensor fusion using measurements from an onboard inertial measurement unit (accelerometers and rate gyros) with vision-based measurements derived from the homography relationship. Therefore, the measurement update in the filter requires the processing …


Autonomous Quadrotor Collision Avoidance And Destination Seeking In A Gps-Denied Environment, Thomas C. Kirven Jan 2017

Autonomous Quadrotor Collision Avoidance And Destination Seeking In A Gps-Denied Environment, Thomas C. Kirven

Theses and Dissertations--Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

This thesis presents a real-time autonomous guidance and control method for a quadrotor in a GPS-denied environment. The quadrotor autonomously seeks a destination while it avoids obstacles whose shape and position are initially unknown. We implement the obstacle avoidance and destination seeking methods using off-the-shelf sensors, including a vision-sensing camera. The vision-sensing camera detects the positions of points on the surface of obstacles. We use this obstacle position data and a potential-field method to generate velocity commands. We present a backstepping controller that uses the velocity commands to generate the quadrotor's control inputs. In indoor experiments, we demonstrate that the …


Designing A Remote Aerial System To Image And Analyze The Health Of Grape Crops At Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Alexander D. Vice, Dylan Benton, Adipratnia Asmady, Andrew Mercier, Andrew Meyer, Eric Belfield, Aaron Drake Aug 2015

Designing A Remote Aerial System To Image And Analyze The Health Of Grape Crops At Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Alexander D. Vice, Dylan Benton, Adipratnia Asmady, Andrew Mercier, Andrew Meyer, Eric Belfield, Aaron Drake

STAR Program Research Presentations

In the last decade the prevalence of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has exploded; however, the presence of UAVs in research situations is still a relatively new and untested field. The autonomous flight lab (AFL) at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo is a new lab site that is dedicated to using UAVs to benefit research for all backgrounds. Before AFL was able to fly missions we first needed to actually receive our vehicles, create a lab space that would provide all of the necessary resources and equipment necessary to fly, and to be granted permission by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) …


A Mobile Self-Leveling Landing Platform For Small-Scale Uavs, Stephen Austin Conyers Jan 2014

A Mobile Self-Leveling Landing Platform For Small-Scale Uavs, Stephen Austin Conyers

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents a semi-autonomous mobile self-leveling landing platform designed to launch, recover and re-launch VTOL UAVs without the need for human intervention. The landing platform is rugged, lightweight and inexpensive, making it ideal for civilian applications that require a base station from which a rotorcraft UAV can be launched and recovered on terrain that is normally unsuitable for UAV operations. This landing platform is capable of self-leveling on rough terrain and inclined slopes, and can autonomously operate in remote locations for extended periods of time using large onboard lithium batteries and wireless communication. This thesis discusses the unique design …