This week, UAV Forge has begun working to improve their organization and task-management system. With a progress discussion with the UCI Senior Design Project management, we were motivated to improve our work by addressing the lack structure we have in this project. As they say, you’ll only get what you put in. So we are working hard to accomplish our quarter goal: to be selected in the winter Design Review and show that our plane will hover!!

Propulsion team is investigating the roll rate for the tiltrotor. Overall, they are still researching how to improve the flight functions of the plane with the TH-controllers and mixers.

Mechanical Design is still working on modifying the frame for the FEA simulations and they had to redesign some of the joints. They are creating a “fastening joint” so that the wing spar can be divided in two and be connected to the middle of the frame. The FEA simulations help with fixing the components that break during flight tests.

Fabrication team is aligning the jig for the wing assembly. They have created foam cuts for the control surfaces and laser cutting the airfoils. They are also waiting for their shipment of balsa wood to make the ribs of the wing.

Ground Station is adjusting their C++ and JavaScript code for their new Qt 5.7 program application. They are experimenting with a new UML editor, where the editor can create a flow diagram of how their coding functions. the team has worked with Avionics for the network protocol work. The two teams have decided that Ground Station will design, code and test the protocol while holding back on interfacing the PixHawk.

Avionics has soldered the battery connections to the servo systems in the plane and they have verified that the sonar works. The team will start testing the Arduino-PixHawk integration using the UserCode.cpp library in UART.