C3UV
2007 - 2009
Because of my interest in aviation and engineering, as well as my RC background, I naturally ended up working for a UAV research group while at Cal. C3UV (Center for collaborative control of unmanned vehicles) focuses on writing control algorithms that utilize multiple UAV’s to perform various tasks such as perimeter patrolling and area searching. They focused mainly on the software and needed help on the hardware side. This is where I came in. I helped them build, and maintain their UAV fleet. I worked for the research group starting the summer of my freshman year and have since worked for them off and on, mostly in the role of pilot. You might ask: isn't a UAV suppose to fly itself? why would you need a pilot? This is true and ours did indeed fly themselves, but there are times when you need a pilot. As pilot I would take the airplane off, land the airplane (the autopilot could only fly the plane in stable flight), and intervene in case anything went wrong (code bugs or hardware problems). This meant that most of the time, I would be watching the plane, making sure the autopilot was doing it's job and the plane was not about to crash. The most recent flight test I did with C3UV was in august of 2010.
Camp Roberts / Flight Ops
To test our software, we would relocate for weeks at a time to an army base near Paso Robles, Ca: Camp Roberts.
Bat IV
The Bat IV was a new airframe that our research group was starting to use. It was custom built to provide the features we cared about most: long flight time and heavy payload. The airframe also featured a gimbaled camera on the front. It was a large improvement over our other airframe but proved difficult to integrate into our existing fleet. It required a much more serious
Engine Trouble
During one of our flight ops at Camp Roberts, we experienced some unusual trouble. Immediately after takeoff I heard a loud noise that sounded like a baseball bat hitting a concrete floor. The soothing sound of the running engine had also died away. I immediately turned the plane around and dead-sticked it on the runway. After examining the plane we found that the engine had exploded. The crank case had completely separated from
Recently, we have begun designing a new airframe that will be hand launch-able, electric, durable, and will only require modest ground support equipment. Although we will not be able to run our full collaborative control language (CCL) on the airplane because it wont have the necessary processing speed, it will allow us to individually verify small portions of the code without the hassle of flying one of our larger more complicated aircrafts. I have included some pictures of some of the planes in our fleet. Almost all the pictures were taken at our usual flying location: CIRPAS airstrip at Camp Roberts Military Base.