UAV Forge

Summary: 

UAV Forge is a multidisciplinary engineering design team that focuses on the design, manufacturing, programming and testing of autonomous aerial vehicles. The design aims to fulfill the constraints that allows the team to participate in the AUVSI SUAS 2021-2022 competition season. The AUVSI competition requires that the system’s UAV have autonomous flight capabilities, ability to perform object avoidance of stationary and dynamic objects, the ability to do object detection, localization, and classification. The system must also perform an airdrop task wherein UAV Forge will be manufacturing an assembly that will interface the UAV with a descent and autonomous ground vehicle. The ground vehicle,once landed, will autonomously drive to its’ set destination to complete payload delivery. Though the emphasis for this year’s team is to perform well in the competition setting, the primary objective is to ensure the undergraduate students participating in the project apply their engineering skills to a compelling real-world problem.

Background: 

“The SUAS competition is designed to foster interest in Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS), stimulate interest in UAS technologies and careers, and to engage students in a challenging mission. The competition requires students to design, integrate, report on, and demonstrate a UAS capable of autonomous flight and navigation, remote sensing via onboard payload sensors, and execution of a specific set of tasks. The competition has been held annually since 2002.

Multiple package delivery companies have tasked Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) to deliver packages to customers. These UAS must avoid each other, map the operating area to identify hazards, avoid static obstacles like buildings, identify potential drop locations, drop the package to a safe location, and then move the package to the customer.” - SUAS 2022 Rulebook

Goals and Objectives:

The scope of this project is to design, manufacture, build, program and test an Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) to compete in the 2022 AUVSI SUAS Competition. The team will aim to be competition ready by the first week of June 2022. The UAS must accomplish Autonomous Flight, Obstacle Avoidance, Object Detection Classification and Localization (ODCL), and Air Delivery. Design decisions should seek to strike a balance between speed of completion with respect to the project timeline, consistency, and competition effectiveness (points scored). Solutions will be both manufactured by team members and bought off the shelf, left to the discretion of team members. The team will be proactive in defining system requirements, setting strong deadlines, and updating its Work Breakdown Structure as the calendar year progresses. The team will demonstrate operational excellence throughout the year with effective communication between subsystems and members, extensive testing procedures, protocols to deal with system failure, and ensuring safety of the UAS and its members. Major deviations to the project timeline for any subsystem will be brought to the attention of the leads in a timely manner.

Fall Quarter: Design decisions made, solutions designed, and purchase orders for necessary parts submitted.

Winter Quarter: The sub system teams perform unit tests through out the week to make sure the design is ready for the overall test at the end of each week.

Spring Quarter: The sub system teams finalize their designs, run tests and bring it all together developing a drone ready for competition. 

Team Contact:

Email: uavforge.uci.sdp@gmail.com

Wesbite: https://sites.uci.edu/uavforge/

Instagram: @uavforgeatuci

Advisor: 

Professor David Copp 

Contact: dcopp@uci.edu

Documentation:

Team Formation Contract

 

Project status: 
Active
Department: 
EECS
MAE
Term: 
Fall
Winter
Spring
Academic year: 
2021-2022
Author: