No abstract

This report investigates the flight dynamics of a small-scale (2 ft) towed system using a quadcopter and actively controlled payload. A towed system includes a main driver to propel the system forward connected to a payload via a tether. The towed system here is unique, and in that the driver is a scratch built quadcopter while the payload is also a scratch built actively controlled aircraft. The payload is designed to carry a small instrument that must be sufficiently far away from all interferences created by a quadcopter. A fully non-linear full state model is created and utilized to reveal that oscillations in the payload are decreased with the introduction of a PD controller on the payload. An experimental setup is built to validate simulation results. Experiments show that an actively controlled payload can decrease the attitude oscillations of the payload.

A comparison between two types of sensors and two types of simulation software are investigated here for a student built rocket. Many students use an open source software package called OpenRocket which uses empirical aerodynamics based on the shape of the rocket. This software is compared to the standard set of rigid body dynamic equations using coefficients for the aerodynamics based on windtunnel and computational fluid dynamics tests. During experimentation two sensors are used and price and resolution is compared. The first sensor is a turn-key sensor called the TeleMega which has many features such as telemetry and on board data logging. In an effort to reduce costs, the Arduino Mega platform has been augmented with a custom made shield capable of measuring Global Positioning System (GPS), angular velocity, and attitude information with on board data logging as well. Although this sensor has limited functionality, the cost is substantially reduced. It is shown that all sensors and simulation software have their strengths and weaknesses with appropriate usage for each.