Date of Award

6-1-2013

Document Type

Masters Thesis

Degree Name

M.S.

Organizational Unit

Daniel Felix Ritchie School of Engineering and Computer Science

First Advisor

Kimon P. Valavanis, Ph.D.

Second Advisor

Matthew J. Rutherford, Ph.D.

Third Advisor

Michail Kontitsis

Fourth Advisor

Robert Whitman

Fifth Advisor

Bradley Davidson

Keywords

Fixed-wing, Mechatronic, UAV, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, XMOS

Abstract

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles have been research in the past decade for a broad range of tasks and application domains such as search and rescue, reconnaissance, traffic control, pipe line inspections, surveillance, border patrol, and communication bridging.

This work describes the design and implementation of a lightweight Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) semi-autonomous Fixed-Wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). Presented here is a methodology for System Identification utilizing the Box-Jenkins model estimator on recorded flight data to characterize the system and develop a mathematical model of the aircraft. Additionally, a novel microprocessor, the XMOS, is utilized to navigate and maneuver the aircraft utilizing a PD control system.

In this thesis is a description of the aircraft and the sensor suite utilized, as well as the flight data and supporting videos for the benefit of the UAV research community.

Publication Statement

Copyright is held by the author. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.

Rights Holder

Jonathan Alejandro Girwar-Nath

Provenance

Received from ProQuest

File Format

application/pdf

Language

en

File Size

111 p.

Discipline

Electrical engineering, Mechanical engineering, Computer engineering

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