- Follow our UAS Challenge Awards Ceremony – 19 June at 2.30pm – 3.30pm online.
The teams discuss their achievements to date, challenges encountered and the lessons they have learnt in their quest to design and build an aircraft that could operate in a humanitarian aid mission.
Q: Could you briefly tell us about your team – any interesting facts or background information?
Team Hawk (TH): Our team is made up of five MEng Mechanical Engineering students and several students in their BEng years, made up from Electrical, Mechanical and Automotive Engineering courses. Of the five MEng team members we have the benefit of experience within the aerospace industry as well as experience of general industrial engineering practice regarding design, development, testing and manufacturing.
Team oUFO (TO): We are the first team from The Open University that decided to take on this challenge. Some of us study full-time and some of us does it part time, we range from first to final year students. Many of us have families and work full-time besides the studies, so this is definitely an additional challenge for us but some of us are only just starting out in the industry.
Q: Could you tell us about the design and innovation aspect of your aircraft?
TH: The design itself revolves around a fixed-wing aircraft with innovations in a morphing wing system, improving flow characteristics on the airfoil surfaces by removing ailerons from the assembly and with an airless tyre landing gear, removing the need for a suspension assembly. The payload mechanism also included a bomb bay door solution for deployment and a cruciform parachute method for payload delivery.
TO: Our plane was designed with the environment in mind. We have planned to offset all aircraft related carbon emissions including the shipping of the parts, online meetings’ energy requirements and the flight itself. Our machine has an aerodynamic shape to make sure it is efficiently delivering the payload in different conditions. The modular design that was in our minds from the concept phase would allow relatively quick assembly. The aircraft is broken up in such way that makes it very intuitive and easy to assemble for people that do not have any experience in these sorts of things. The plane also has its own travel compartment that provides protection and allows the whole unit to be delivered by a parachute.
Q: How could your UAV be used to help vulnerable people and fight against COVID-19?
TH: Given the needs we have all had during self-isolation and lockdown as well as the needs of vulnerable people, it has a relationship between people in hard to reach areas that have been afflicted with a natural disaster, much in the same way the UAS Challenge presents its problem in the rules, and people who due to social distancing we can’t reach. To provide the necessary supplies to people/institutions in need with a payload delivery tool such as our UAV, even if it wasn’t designed with COVID-19 in mind can still be used to overcome the challenges faced in these difficult times.
TO: This is an interesting question; we see how drones such as ours are used for medical purposes in remote areas. We think that using drones to deliver prescriptions to people who are shielding themselves allowing them to avoid any human contact is one of the few available solutions. Area surveillance can utilise the camera and the extended flight range of the drone when it does not carry a heavy payload. Additionally, it can be used to transport samples from test locations to labs swiftly.
Q: What are the key skills you learnt from this project and what were the challenges you faced?
TH: Interaction between team members and the interpersonal skills related to that is quite an important aspect of this project. Also, meeting the requirements of an engineering challenge through a Systems Engineering approach to design a fit for purpose solution and amalgamating the individual work of several team members to create a product from concept to (what would have been) field in 7-8 months was a good experience that can hopefully be built on in future.
Losing team members half-way through the year was an unexpected additional challenge we had to rise to, adapting and restructuring the roles and responsibilities was a challenge in project management that had to be overcome.
TO: Well as you can assume the biggest challenge for us has been finding a time that suited everyone for the bi-weekly meetings and finding our way without prior experience utilising the technologies available.
The design of a plane body that allows short take off with maximum load was a big challenge for the team. The mechanical team had to do the calculations of required thrust and the electrical team had to design a system that is capable to provide that thrust yet is light enough so the plane can take the payload. There was an obvious trade-off where we realised that we need to lower the take-off weight and consequently the payload too in order to find light enough batteries.
We really have improved in our already pretty good time management skills. This Challenge has provided a group of people to work together on something important as a team. Team working is often an underrated skill and hard to master without opportunities such as the UAS Challenge.
To recognise the efforts of teams to date, the UAS Challenge Organising Committee has agreed to host a virtual ceremony 2:30pm BST 19 June 2020 to present teams with the following Awards for:
- Design
- Safety
- Innovation
- Media and Engagement
- Business Proposition
- Highest-Placed New Entrant.