Task 6

Plan Of Action

Nur Harell, Tyler Jordan

In the following, team SPAERO presents the final Plan of Action, ranging from 5/20/2015 until the last day of the competition. The enhanced plan includes slight adjustments to the plan presented in PS2.

Apart from minor deviations, the overall project progress proceeded as planned. Intense and continuous interdisciplinary communication enabled Team SPAERO to recognize and overcome potential issues early and ensure a smooth and continuous workflow.

After closely analyzing the improvement potential of SPAERO 1, the team has decided to go back to the mindset presented during PS1. Rather than manufacturing multiple prototypes with incremental improvements, the focus was put on designing one optimized and final prototype. For that reason, the deadline for the second prototype was abandoned for the sake of having additional time for the design. The second and final prototype, the SPAERO 2 was ready to fly on 05/17/2015. This is two days later than the specified deadline. The delay resulted from multiple unforeseen difficulties in the manufacturing process which are mentioned in task 4. Possible setbacks have been taken into account while setting the Plan of Action so the minor delay did not pose any challenges to the workflow or to gathering the data required for PS3.

The focus on the design turned out to be of great value. The SPAERO 2 has turned out to be orders of magnitude better in terms of efficiency, stability and weight than the SPAERO 1. Its performance is considered to be more than sufficient to master the mission and allows the mission planning team flexibility to try out different search algorithm approaches. The design and manufacturing team will now focus on manufacturing sufficient spare components such as wings, tails and parts of the fuselage so that possible damage can be repaired quickly and won’t cause any unnecessary delays during the competition.

The primary target for the coming week is to integrate and test the mission planning algorithm on the Pixhawk as soon as possible. Multiple setbacks and challenges are expected during the implementation of the simulated search algorithms on the SPAERO 2. It is therefore considered to be crucial to have experimental data and develop the algorithms based on that rather than additional improvements of simulated data that may or may not turn out to be realistic. First test flights with primary search algorithms are expected on 5/23/2015. After that, the Mission Planning and Controls team will work together to further develop the search algorithm and tweak the controls system according to the emerging needs to deliver optimal performance throughout the mission.

Frequent flights are planned in order to get as much experimental data as possible and secure a great performance during the final competition. A timeline chart is attached.