Hello All,
Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) is a multidisciplinary student engineering team at UBC that designs innovative unmanned aerial vehicles and their support systems for competitions.
This past year, with the help of CubePilot’s Cube Orange, UBC UAS was able to achieve first place in the Mission Presentation and second place in Phase 1 of the 2021 USC-STC!
Our system simulated medical package delivery from a depot to a clinic over long distances and carrying multiple packages. Our system involved a ground rover that read QR codes to identify and pick up packages, a quadcopter that would pick up and carry the ground rover and the packages from the depot to the clinic, an airborne fixed wing relay to relay communications between our ground station and unmanned vehicles, and an antenna tracker with a directional antenna to maximise the range of our radio communications. The quadcopter is capable of flying at speeds up to 90km/h, has a range of up to 6km, and can carry up to 1.5kg of payload. Meanwhile, the fixed wing relay aircraft was designed to circle around the flight zone and had a flight time of 45 minutes.
As a gold sponsor of our team, CubePilot has been instrumental in helping us build unmanned aircraft systems that consistently perform at a high level and fly safely and reliably. We relied on CubePilot’s Cube Orange along with the Here3 gps system to control our quadcopter and fixed wing. Their firmware and support from the Cube allowed us to ensure mission safety was maintained at all times and that the aircraft had programmed safety procedures in case of a failure. The Cube also allowed us to fly preprogrammed missions so that the fixed wing could easily circle the flight zone. We are grateful for CubePilot’s support for our team and we look forward to testing the cubes with a VTOL setup this year along with using a cube on the antenna tracker for reliable control.
Here are some images from our build:
