A Tailless, Delta-Wing Glider
We chose to create a tailless glider so that the plane could be hung, nose-down, from a weather balloon.
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My project partner, Dave Sozanski, working with the electronics package on a testing day.
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CNC for precision, Carbon for strength.
The final model was cut from insulation foam in a number of pieces. Following this, the electronics were embedded, the drone was assembled, and laminated.
Flight Planning
Since the drone was unpowered, and tethered to a weather balloon, we were at the mercy of the winds on the way up to altitude. We used tracking software to predict the apogee of the flight plan. My computer shows the flight path during the day of launch, highlighted in purple.
Electronics Suite
Servos and cables for the ailerons were embedded prior to lamination. Flight computers, batteries, GPS units and the camera were contained in a modular, removable package.
And of course, hours of testing
We logged hours of flight time on test drones while honing flight planning and navigation algorithms.
And in the end...
It reached full altitude and successfully autonomously deployed from the weather balloon, however it touched down in the Atlantic off the coast of Martha's Vineyard. It washed ashore on Cape Code and we were able to recover the drone, flight data, and video after over two weeks at sea.
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(Feel free to skip to minute 3 for the final flight video!)