Enviromental Awareness In the Maritime Domain

Fall 2014 – Spring 2015
Course 2.013/2.014, 16.82
The Mechanical Engineering and Aero/Astro Engineering departments are collaborating to design, build, and demonstrate an integrated system to enable long-endurance surveillance operations in marine environments. The key elements of this novel system are deployable power pod and autonomous seaplane. By providing power and communications to the seaplane, the power pod significantly extends the duration of surveillance operations in support search and rescue, marine life and environmental monitoring, border patrol, and naval operations.

Enviromental Awareness In the Maritime Domain

Fall 2014 – Spring 2015
Course 16.82
Students in the Aero/Astro Capstone Course designed a novel autonomous seaplane to perform long-endurance surveillance operations. The duration of conventional small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) missions is typically limited to a few hours by the capacity of their onboard power systems. To significantly extend operations, students designed a UAV that can land on the sea surface, dock with a floating resupply station, recharge onboard batteries, transfer surveillance data, and takeoff from the sea surface to continue airborne operations. Some of the advanced systems in the UAV include autonomous navigation and docking payloads, rotating pontoons, and an onboard recharging system. The design for this system was completed in the fall 2014 semester, and students plan to build and demonstrate this novel capability in the spring 2015 semester.

Novel UAV Development

Fall 2014 – Spring 2015
Course 16.82
Air-launched boost-glide UAVs for organic sensing capabilities.

Deployable mini-UAV Project

Spring 2015
Course 2.007
Deployable mini-UAV concept demonstration - II                                                                                                                 

Robust Communications for Autonomous Swarms

Fall 2015
Course

UAV Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) Missions

Flexible Aircraft System Testbed (FAST)

Fall 2012 – Spring 2013
Course 16.82 / 16.821 / 16.885
During the capstone course, MIT successfully designed, constructed, and flew two UAVs – one man-portable field-assembled vehicle (6 ft wingspan and 0.5 lb payload) and one multimission vehicle (11 ft wingspan and single 2 lb payload). A modular system architecture was developed using common tooling and components (for wings, spars, spine, joiners), common fuselage pod (adjustable CG, flexible payloads), and COTS components (power systems, communications, and control).

Large UAV Design Course

Spring 2012
Course 16.82
Students successfully designed a vehicle to cruise at >50 k ft with a 1,000 nmi mission radius and 20 hour loiter on station time, with a wingspan under 80 meters and payload aperture between 6 and 12 meters long and 0.5 meters tall. Representative UAV payload performance, size, weight and power requirements were also met.

Deployable mini-UAV Course

Spring 2012
Course 2.007
Students designed, built, and flew several novel UAVs, overcoming challenges of packaging aircraft into small diameter launch tube, surviving launch acceleration, self-deploying on a ballistic trajectory, and transitioning to stable flight.

Project Perdix

Fall 2010 – Spring 2011
Course 16.82 / 16.821 / 16.885 – Professor John Hansman
Successfully designed, constructed, and flew ground and balloon-launched micro UAVs that supported airborne environmental monitoring.  Students prepared and presented a summary of their work at the 2011 Air Vehicle Survivability Workshop, and received very favorable feedback from government, military and industry attendees.  The design for the micro UAV was transitioned to MIT/LL.

Project Icarus

Fall 2009 – Spring 2010
Course 16.82 / 16.821 / 16.885 – Professor John Hansman
Successfully designed, constructed, and flew two UAVs that supported airborne measurements of ground-based radar antenna patterns.  Students prepared and presented a summary of their work at the 2010 Air Vehicle Survivability Workshop, and received very favorable feedback from government, military, and industry attendees.  Both UAVs were transitioned to MIT/LL, and payloads for airborne antenna pattern measurements were integrated into one vehicle and used for several local flights.