This project gives students experience of the design architecture and process, trade-offs and team work required to design a flight control system for a tethered helicopter uav. The team should create a mathematical model of the vehicle, design controllers and evaluate their performance.

Weekly meetings with supervisor. Weekly meetings as a team without supervisor.

None

None

60% group final report (to be submitted at final presentation), weighted by self-assessment contribution from each student within the team.

10% group final presentation), weighted by self-assessment contribution from each student within the team.

30% technical performance of team, weighted by contribution of each student based on individual time sheets agreed at regular meetings and self-assessment of each team members' contributions.

Reassessments are normally available for all courses, except those which contribute to the Honours classification. For non Honours courses, students are offered reassessment in all or any of the components of assessment if the satisfactory (threshold) grade for the overall course is not achieved at the first attempt. This is normally grade D3 for undergraduate students and grade C3 for postgraduate students. Exceptionally it may not be possible to offer reassessment of some coursework items, in which case the mark achieved at the first attempt will be counted towards the final course grade. Any such exceptions for this course are described below. 

This is a team project and individual reassessment is therefore impractical.

The aims of this course are to:

■ introduce students to the practical issues involved in a team design project;

■ enable students to implement their knowledge within an Aerospace Systems based team design project;

■ introduce students to project management and team building aspects for such a project.

■ Introduce students to the issues of managing a team of undergraduate students undertaking a similar project where appropriate.

By the end of this course students will be able to:

■ develop a mathematical model and simulation of a tethered helicopter UAV;

■ design feedback control algorithms to control the motion of the vehicle;

■ design a system for autonomous flight control operations;

■ evaluate and refine the algorithms;

■ assess the relative performance of the controllers;

■ develop a practical project plan from requirements capture to test & validation;

■ employ project management concepts including costing of the activities and time/resource management.

Students must submit at least 75% by weight of the components of the course's summative assessment.

Students must attend the timetabled laboratory classes.

Students should attend at least 75% of the timetabled classes of the course.

Note that these are minimum requirements: good students will achieve far higher participation/submission rates.  Any student who misses an assessment or a significant number of classes because of illness or other good cause should report this by completing a MyCampus absence report.