With the quarter nearing closure, a few major changes have been decided within UAV Forge to allow the team to move into next quarter with new vigor and resolution.
In these past few weeks, the Aerodynamics team has been working on determining the viability of using the Sig-T kit plane as a testing platform for Avionics’ hardware. The Propulsion team has spent some time working on the project’s quad-copter so that there would be an immediately functional testing ground for the Ground Station team to implement their GUI software.
The Structures team has continued to work in fabrication training and has begun heavily considering the method to which the UAV will drop the payload and ensure its bursting on impact. An early CAD design has been proposed and is currently being discussed and modified.
The Avionics team has seen significant progress after a majority of their requested parts arrived. Remote image capture and the sending of those images via antenna are now functional. The Ground Station has been working with the Avionics team as they have reached the stage to connect their software with the PixHawk 2.
The Project will also be adopting a new management structure for this next quarter to solve some issues that have arisen throughout the quarter. With Ariel Louie remaining the sole Project Manager, Kristen Okano becoming the Chief Engineer of the Structures, Aerodynamics, and Propulsion teams, and Che-Wei (Willy) Chang becoming the Chief Engineer of the Avionics and Ground Station teams, the facilitation of communication and overall task distribution will be greatly bolstered.
With the end of the quarter in sight, the project has a long road to finishing a completely functional competition plane. Despite the large amount of work ahead, members are ready to begin fabrication and testing to ensure that UAV Forge’s plane is a fierce competitor.
– Kenzo Spaulding UAV Forge Documentation Officer