In our last week, UAV Forge has made tangible progress since the beginning of the quarter: a frame and electronics housing. These final products exhibit the magnitude and scale of our work.

During our last project meeting, the quarter grading session was scheduled on Saturday, where the teams meet with the Project Lead (Cheng) and Project Manager to discuss each of the member’s contributions for this quarter. The grades are subjective and the grades from the previous quarter are considered. Incoming Project Lead Ariel attended all the sessions to listen in for ideas, concerns, and questions that would help her improve the project for next year. Also, Ariel and Kristen announced that they will be planning the project’s year-long goals and clean up the work space during the summer. Current and prospective members are invited to help.

Propulsion team has been assembling the Rotormast. There are a lot of components that don’t have labels and the online build instructions aren’t updated so the assembling process is difficult. The team has completed 10% of the assembly (as seen in the picture above). For next year, the team hopes to complete the Rotormast and research it’s performance so that the project can improve their current design.

During this quarter, Mechanical Design have performed various FEA simulations and assisted in assembling the electronics housing and frame. For next year, the team will work on improving its analytical understanding of the FEA result and consider using other FEA programs such as MSC Apex and ANSYS.

During this quarter, Fabrication team built the frame and electronics housing while collaborating with Mechanical Design and Avionics. For next year, the team will build the fuselage, finish the wings once the electronics are finalized, and to better pass on their building knowledge to new incoming members.

Ground Station summarizes their year-long work. Seen from the picture above, the team has made big changes to the GUI, both in appearance and functionality. Starting from fall, the team focused on creating a modular GUI design, improving the inter-connectivity between the Mission Planning, Execution, and Recap functions. In winter, the team finished the Mission Recap function, executed an MDI GUI update, overhauled the mapping simulation code, and created their first working database code. And finally, in spring, the team researched on the MAVLink network protocol and worked on improving the program’s internal data flow design. For next year, Ground Station and Avionics will have to work together to synchronize the communications between an online server, the GUI program, and the UAV.

Avionics has finalized the wire layout (pictured above) for the final tilt rotor platform (the current frame that was built). The team has also finished the battery bus and switching circuit design and will begin performing tests. The team’s plans for next year are to complete the switching circuit, implement the wiring layout, implement battery bus, read the I2C/PWM input to the Ardupilot, then configure and integrate the Pixhawk 2 to the quad copter for testing.

Our project will be present to see at the Spring Design Review!
Thank you for following our project’s progress!