Minha Jo Jacob Adamski Nicolas Grande Sungje Park Sriram Rajamani Tarun Karthikeyan Vikas Patel
We address the final stages in the development of a dynamic soaring (DS) capable unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). This project has been funded by the Embry-Riddle Office of Undergraduate Research throug..
We address the final stages in the development of a dynamic soaring (DS) capable unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). This project has been funded by the Embry-Riddle Office of Undergraduate Research through the Ignite program. Dynamic soaring is a bio-inspired flight maneuver in which energy is extracted by flying through regions of wind velocity gradient such as the wind shear layer. The objective of our project is to design an autonomous dynamic soaring flight controller through simulation, develop a DS capable UAV platform, and perform DS maneuvers in the real world. For simulation, a 6-degrees-of-freedom (6DoF) flight simulation environment in MATLAB and Simulink has been developed. Using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) a variable-fidelity aerodynamic model was obtained. The UAV platform is an FMS Fox Aerobatic Glider, a high aspect-ratio powered glider with a robust sensor suite and autonomous flight control system. Finally, we are developing a reinforcement-learning (RL) trained artificial intelligence (AI) that will optimize the path of the UAV to minimize power consumption. After completion, the UAV will be capable of testing future DS navigation systems. This presentation will discuss current progress as well as address challenges we face in the completion of our goals.