UAV
University of Notre Dame Senior Design 2018-2019
This project is to design the UAV payload electrical systems for Notre Dame’s NASA Student Launch team. Included responsibilities are management of power, flight controller, onboard microcomputer, and electronic speed controllers. The UAV will have the capability to automatically detect and navigate to a target where a navigational beacon shall be deployed.
The official competition description per NASA’s website is as follows:
“The NASA Student Launch (SL) is a research-based, competitive, and experiential learning project that provides relevant and cost-effective research and development.”
“Student Launch reaches a broad audience of colleges, universities, and secondary institutions across the nation in an 8-month commitment to design, build, launch, and fly a payload(s) and vehicle components that support NASA research on high-power rockets. The College/University Division challenge is based on team selection of one of the following experiment options: 1) deployable rover and soil sample collection or 2) deployable unmanned aerial vehicle and delivery of a navigational beacon.”
This year Notre Dame Rocketry Team selected experiment option 2, a deployable UAV. NASA’s Student Launch competition runs from August - April, with Launch Day scheduled on April 6. During these 8 months, we will complete a series of design reviews that resemble the NASA engineering design lifecycle.
