Meet the team: Vortex
| Teacher: | Dr Stephen Patterson |
| Team members: | Pranav Prabhu (team leader), James Brandreth (Quadrocopter /general aerospace engineering), Raphael Taylor-Davies(Lead programmer and software to hardware interface), Luca Ciraolo (Radio Systems and Programming), Louis De Beaumont (Circuit design and manufacture), Anand Sharma (Outreach and design), Daniel Mobayyen (Outreach), Arjun Krishna (Financials). |
| School: | St. Paul's School, London |
| Country: | UK |
Description of the Cansat mission:
Our secondary mission is to generate a completely self–guided system by which our CanSAT Quadrocopter can get to a pre-defined landing point. We aim to create a system whereby we can input a particular location into the processor, and have our CanSAT direct itself towards the objective, via a 3-axis PID algorithm. 3 axis gyroscopes, magnetometers and accelerometers will be used to provide raw data about the motion of the quadrocopter. This data will then be filtered in order to obtain the yaw, pitch and roll of the quadrocopter. GPS and altimeter data will then be added to give a full picture of the position of the quadrocopter.
Quadrocopters have a number of advantages over traditional rotorcraft;
- Higher manoeuvrability and speed
- The blades are fixed pitch, thus removing the mechanical complexity of swash plates.
- The use of four smaller rotors allows the usage of smaller diameter blades. This means they suffer less from the efficiency drop as the tips of the blades approach Mach 1. It also reduces the damage should the blades hit anything.
The main underlying principle of our project is to make the CanSat self-aware and effectively intelligent. After a successful launch we would aim to test limitations of the rotor and motor system to better understand its abilities especially at altitude. The stability of the system at low altitudes will allow it to have many practical uses. It can be used for accurate payload delivery whether humanitarian or for warfare. Once developed and tested a quiet quadrocopter CanSat can be used for military and surveillance purposes, especially in urban areas because of high manoeuvrability. It can also be used in films due to its agile nature and with lighter payloads much faster rates of acceleration. It allows filmmakers and generals alike to acquire unprecedented views and different perspective at a relatively low cost.
Visit the team's Facebook page.