Talk

1. “Click here” to design &
build your UAV
Dirk Gorissen
-
Imperial College Robotics Society – Megabyte Talks
-
13 December 2011

2. Outline
• About us
• The DECODE vision
• UAV (AUV/UGV) technology
• The DECODE system
• Rapid manufacturing
• Future work

3. About me
• Master in Computer Science – Antwerp University, Belgium
• Master in Artificial Intelligence – Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium
• PhD in Computational Engineering – Ghent University, Belgium
– Topic: Surrogate Modeling & Surrogate based optimization
– During this time also worked at
• Distributed Computing Laboratory – Emory University, Atlanta, USA
• Neuromodeling Lab – Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada
• Research Fellow at the Computational Engineering and Design Group
under Prof. Andy Keane – Southampton University, UK
• Main interest: Computational Engineering & Software Development

4. Who are we?

5. What do we do?

6. Outline
• About us
• The DECODE vision
• UAV (AUV/UGV) technology
• The DECODE system
• Rapid manufacturing
• Future work

7. DECODE Project team
• Professors: • PhD Students:
– Jim Scanlan – Jeroen van Schaik
– Andy Keane – Mario Ferraro
– Kenji Takeda – Marc Bolinches
• Post doc: – Ben Schumann
• Associated:
– Erika Quaranta
– Dirk Gorissen – Alex Forrester
– Ivan Vouchkov

8. The DECODE Project
• Looking at how complex aerospace systems are designed
• £800k EPSRC project
• In particular, the decision making process related to the
design
– How are decisions made?
– Who makes them?
– How final are the?
– How arbitrary are they?
– Are they recorded?

9. Design decisions
• Important to rationalize decisions
– Motivate them during design
review meetings
• However,
– Design of something is never
“finished”
– Time pressure leads to
arbitrary detail decisions
– No immediate payoff for
recording rationale

10. Making decisions
• Which ones matter?
• Heatmap?

11. Making decisions

12. Case Study: UAVs
• UAV: Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAS)
• Mostly for military use but civilian market growing fast
– Mapping/surveying, atmospheric measurements, search
and rescue, wildlife management, …
• UAV market in 2010: $6.6 b. & rise to $55 b. by 2020

13. UAVs: Why?
• Complex enough to be taken seriously
• „Simple‟ enough to be tackled within a university research
project
• We can go through the full lifecycle
– Design -> build -> fly -> crash!
– Necessary to appreciate the impact and constraints of
decisions

14. UAVs: Why?
• Its cool 
• Great for students

15. Outline
• About us
• The DECODE vision
• UAV (AUV/UGV) technology
• The DECODE system
• Rapid manufacturing
• Future work

16. Fixed Wing UAVs

17. Wing technology
• Inflatable & morphing wings
– adapt to flight conditions
– no movable surfaces (better flow)

18. Wind tunnel

19. Rotary UAVs
• Control hardware and software developed from scratch

20. Rotary UAVs

21. Rotary UAV - Specs
• Angstrom / Open Embedded linux.
• Gumstix Overo Fire, 720 MHz ARM Cortex-A8 OMAP 3530
• 802.11 Wifi, Ethernet, serial TTY for IMU, I2C bus.
• CH Robotics UM6 AHRS/IMU.
• E-Flite Part 450 BLDC motors, 890KV.
• Mikrokopter BL-CTRL electronic speed controllers, I2C setpoint
• APC 12x6 Slow Fly Electric propellers.
• Daventec SRF10 ground sonar.
• ublox GS407 5Hz GPS
• Bosh BMP085 absolute pressure altimeter.
• Arduino Mini Pro 16MHz 'helper' processors on I2C bus.
• 3-cell LiPo.
• Spektrum DX8.

22. Rotary UAV - Specs
• Video downlink FPV kit:
• vTx: IftronTech 5.8 GHz 25mW with 3dBi duck.
• vRx: Yellow Jacket Diversity Pro 5.8GHz (-85dBm) with 3dBi duck and 11dBi patch.
• Sony PAL/CCD camera
• Fatshark FPV goggles
• 9-inch LCD monitor
• tripod

23. Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGV)
• Autonomous Systems Laboratory
– Earth-based facility for the testing of advanced control
systems sought to be applied in space

24. Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV)
• Autosub family
– Autosub1: awarded Millennium Product status by the UK Design
Council
– more than 300 missions of increasing complexity over 2000
kilometres
– Autosub Under Ice programme, four expeditions under sea ice and
under an Antarctic floating glacier
– Autosub Long Range: combining a 6000m depth capability with an
endurance of 6000km

25. Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV)
• A concept study for air-launched underwater vehicles is also in
progress.

26. Soton ASTRA
• low cost platform for science missions such as pollution
monitoring and weather prediction
• Modular balloon launched glider

27. The „U‟ in UAV
• Sky Circuits Autopilot (www.skycircuits.com)
• Originally developed at the NOC
• Closely affiliated with the DECODE project team

28. Sky Circuits Autopilot
• Bridges the gap between very low cost / low performance
systems, and high end / expensive military derived systems
• 3-axis accelerometers, 3-axis gyroscopes, 3-axis
magnetometers, dynamic and static pressure sensors
• 80g
• Adjustable flight automation level
• Flight telemetry
• In flight commands and mission scripts
• Modular payload interface

29. Autopilot: Ground station
• Ground station

30. Autopilot: Telemetry
0.15
0.1
0.05
pb/2V 0
-0.05
-0.1
-0.15
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16
Time (s)

31. Auto-takeoff

32. Auto Landing

33. Autopilot: Scripting
# set initial parameters
pressure.set_given_uav_at_zero_height
controller.architecture_add_links alt_by_throttle
# launch
cr 5
base_control[pitch].command 2
base_control[roll].command 0
base_control[yaw].command 0
..
# hold current heading, set airspeed to 12 and reduce climb rate
script.store[0] h
cr 2
as 12
..
# wait till at a safe altitude (20m)
script.wait_while_true "logic.less_than_float32 ht 20"
nav.path 1 2 3

34. Outline
• About us
• The DECODE vision
• UAV (AUV/UGV) technology
• The DECODE system
• Rapid manufacturing
• Future work

35. The DECODE Project
• Looking at how complex aerospace systems are designed
• Enhance the decision making process

36. DECODE System
• A computer system to help understand the impact of a
decision
• “Is it worth it?”

37. Case study: Search and Rescue

38. Search and Resuce
• The RLNI has to come look for you
– Helicopter costs £21 million and £6000 per hour
– Lifeboat costs £150,000 and £8000 per hour

39. Search and Rescue: UAVs
• Design low cost UAVs for search and rescue
– UAV costs < £10,000, and< £100 per hour
• Deploy to RNLI stations
• Reduce load on helicopters and lifeboats

40. Designing a S&R UAV
• What does a Search and Resuce UAV look like?
– How big, how heavy, how fast, …
• Decisions guided by an operational simulation

41. System building blocks
Manufacturing

42. Concept Design / Sizing

43. Concept Design / Sizing
Aero Cruise

44. Pacelab Design Suite

45. Excel spreadsheet

46. Concept Design / Sizing

47. Concept Design / Sizing

48. Concept Design / Sizing

49. CAD - SolidWorks
• Difficulty: Concept CAD -> Analysis CAD
• Ultimate goal: fully parametric CAD
– Difficult (Impossible)

50. Aerodynamics

51. Costing

52. Operational Simulation
• Recreation of sample SAR
region using AnyLogic ©
• Agent-Based UAVs,
lifeboats, helicopter
• Realistic data & procedures
• Weather
• Situation-based searches
and decisions by coastguard

53. Design rationale
• Design rationale:
– The explicit listing of decisions made during a design
process, and the reasons why those decisions were
made.
• Primary goal:
– Support designers by providing a means to record and
communicate the argumentation and reasoning behind
the design process.
• Not just on the CAD level
– Also for mission, software tools, etc.

54. Compendium: Design rationale

55. Compendium Maps

56. DECODE System
• How many more lives can we save by reducing the wing
span by 15% ?
• “Is it worth it?”

57. System Architecture

58. Excel client

59. Matlab Client

60. Trades

61. Web Client

62. Web client

63. Decode Vision
• Agile UAV design system
– Probe design in real time
– Rough answers now, accurate answers later
– Live geometry
– Design rationale

64. Decode Vision

65. Outline
• About us
• The DECODE vision
• UAV (AUV/UGV) technology
• The DECODE system
• Rapid manufacturing
• Future work

66. Building UAVs
• Focus on rapid manufacturing, 3D printing
– cheap, fast
– complexity comes for „free‟
• But: important to know the limitations

67. SULSA
• Worlds first 3D printed aircraft (that actually flew)
• Fully parametric geometry

68. SULSA

69. Outline
• About us
• The DECODE vision
• UAV (AUV/UGV) technology
• The DECODE system
• Rapid manufacturing
• Future work

70. Project status
• Halfway through design of DECODE II
– Aim to fly by March
• MSc course in Unmanned Systems
– Supported by QinetiQ, DSTL, BAE systems, Cobham,
Rolls-Royce, Roke Manor , Thales
– Students will use & extend the system

71. DECODE II
• ~ 25 kg • 5 hr endurance
• 4.5 kg payload • 165 km/h cruise speed
• 600 km range

72. Future
• Interest from the BBC, Police, Met Office, Antarctic Survey,
and US Navy
• Potentially film Olympic Torch bearer
• Rocket launched UAV from a balloon

73. Two-Seas Project
• UAV monitoring system for the English channel
– Pollution, smuggling, migration, ocean monitoring, …
– If successful will drive DECODE III

74. Questions?
• News and updates via Twitter: @elazungu