INTEGRATION OF INSTRUMENTATION PAYLOAD ON A REMOTELY PILOTED AERIAL VEHICLE

Several academic institutions are presently engaged in research activities in connection with remotely piloted aerial vehicles. However, there is very little work of this nature undertaken by academic institutions within the country. The Department of Aerospace Engineering, IIT Bombay has decided to make inroads in this field and has undertaken a project to implement an onboard miniature instrumentation system for remotely piloted aerial vehicles. It is envisaged that such an activity will be a precursor to pursuit of design, construction and operation of remotely piloted vehicles with autonomous capabilities in the future. Also availability of such a platform at an academic institution will expose students to the real world problems of dealing with systems and related problems. The project aims to construct an aerial vehicle, in this case a radio controlled aircraft, and integrate a miniature generic instrumentation system onboard. Eight parameters have been identified for measurement. The package can be enhanced to include more parameters if required at a later date. Experimental work that was undertaken as part of this work includes, design, fabrication and wind tunnel calibration of pitot and static probes, a wind vane system for measurement of angle of attack and an interface unit to facilitate recording of aircraft pitch rate. A total of nine flights were possible and flight data could be recorded. The data quality was satisfactory except for accelerometer data, which was too noisy to be usable. ------------------------------------------------*MTech Student ** Research Scientist, *** Professor Unfortunately towards the end of the ninth sortie the aircraft was destroyed in a crash. A second aircraft was built thereafter and is now ready for flight tests. The problem of noise in accelerometer data has been overcome to a great extent by implementation of filters. The project is scheduled to conclude by end of December 2000.