Q&A with Southampton University's UAS Challenge team
The UAS Challenge asks teams of undergraduates to undertake a full design and build cycle of an Unmanned Aircraft System with specific mission objectives. It bridges the gap between academia and industry in developing applied UAS-related activities -
giving students the perfect opportunity to strengthen links with industry and enhance employment opportunities in aerospace. 17 teams are taking part in the 2016 challenge, including one team from Egypt. Ahead of the final fly-off event and judging
on 6-7 July, Rapid’s Education Manager Chris Calver talked to Matthew Weaver from the Nash team at the University of Southampton.
Chris: How long has the University of Southampton been involved with the UAS Challenge?
Matthew: This is the second year the UAS Challenge has been running, and one of our secondary supervisors Professor Jim Scanlan has been on the steering panel since it started. Last year a team from Southampton University took the Overall Grand Champions prize. This year we have 4 teams competing.
How did you and your team get involved?
We used the Challenge for our Masters Group Design Project. This is a compulsory project usually involving collaboration with industry and spanning our entire final year. Our supervisor, Dr Glyn Thomas, has an academic interest in Autonomous Systems and proposed the project to our year’s cohort – we were the selected team members.
Are all members of the team studying aerospace or aeronautics subjects or is there a wider reach within the university?
Actually we are a mixture of Aerospace, Mechanical and Electronic engineering students. I think that was important, as the diverse skill set enabled us to tackle every problem faced in designing an innovative Unmanned Aerial System.
With multicopter drones so readily available now, how do the numbers of fixed-wing aircraft in the competition compare?
They are mostly fixed-wing, which have an advantage during windy conditions. Professor Scanlan has informed us that in the future they may have two separate classes of entry for fixed-wing and multicopter drones.
You have opted to combine fixed-wing and multicopter approaches in your design – is this unusual within the competition?
Yes, as far as we are aware this has not been attempted for the competition to date. Our project has been more focused on innovation, since with a team of 10 this provided more scope for our University project as well as taking part in the competition.
The electronics must be quite complex in this design – what was the biggest challenge for the team?
The greatest challenge our team faced was to build the flight controller ourselves. Under normal circumstances, pretty much all teams use an off the shelf flight controller such as a PixHawk which provides the autonomous code and flight stability. Since we were aiming to perform in-air transition we required further capabilities than off the shelf options offer, and as such took to building the entire system from scratch which proved to be a lot of work!
The aircraft needs to be able to take off, land and fly autonomously but also be flown manually as well – who has the responsibility of being pilot and do they need a lot of experience?
The pilot is hired by IMechE and is an experienced and qualified pilot of UAVs. For testing we also had the opportunity to hire an experienced pilot in Swindon which the University has used before, which enables safe testing of our UAS for the first time in the air. He also provided useful feedback which only an expert would get the feel for within such a short time in the air. I have heard of teams that took courses to learn to fly themselves though, which could be fun if we’d had more time!
Southampton has a number of teams taking part in the competition. Do you share ideas and expertise or is it all a closely guarded secret until competition day?
We are the only team attempting a fixed wing design, let alone a unique take on VTOL (vertical take-off and landing). As such we have not collaborated with the other teams to a large degree, however we all grouped together for the flight-testing day in Swindon which helped save money! Also the Autonomous Systems group within the University has been invaluable in helping us with equipment/facilities so we have all benefitted from this.
What advice would you give to anyone wanting to get involved with the UAS Challenge?
I think it is both a great opportunity and a steep learning curve. The competition has a very high calibre of teams competing, which often results in the teams with the most funding doing very well. However I believe it is a great experience for budding drone designers or anybody who wants to learn more about the fundamentals of flight, engineering, electronics, teamwork and late nights!
