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Defense Date

2007

DOI

https://doi.org/10.25772/1SAX-VX92

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Department

Electrical Engineering

First Advisor

Dr. Robert H. Klenke

Abstract

This project is part of research funded by NASA Langley in field of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and is based on past work conducted at Virginia Commonwealth University. Dr. Mark A. Motter of NASA Langley intends to use the new autopilot system to test aircraft with many control surfaces. The goal of this project is to port an existing UAV autopilot system that has more computing power than the previous generation system to allow for more advanced flight control algorithms.The steps taken to complete this project include choosing a new hardware platform, porting C flight control software from a MicroBlaze platform to a PowerPC platform, and developing FPGA based hardware to interface with external sensors. The Suzaku-V based system was shown to have much better computing performance than the previous system, and several successful test flights have proved the viability of the new autopilot system.

Comments

Part of Retrospective ETD Collection, restricted to VCU only.

Rights

© The Author

Is Part Of

VCU University Archives

Is Part Of

VCU Theses and Dissertations

Date of Submission

June 2008

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