Model Aircraft Work with AIAA
Since my freshman year at UCLA I have been part of the Electronics team of the UAS (Unmanned Aerial Systems) project of AIAA (American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics). The goal of the UAS team is to build a spy plane for the AUVSI SUAS competition. The plane should be capable of autonomous flight as well as performance of certain basic tasks such as taking images of the ground and recognizing patterns in the images taken.
The electronics team, which I am a part of, is responsible for a variety of duties. We make sure that all the control surfaces work properly and can interface with our RC controller through the receiver. We are responsible for the autopilot as well, making sure that the switch between the RC controller and the autopilot is smooth. We also determine the power requirements of the plane - how many batteries we require and how the power should be distributed between the various components of the airplane.