Purdue Aerial Robotics Team

I am very fortunate to be part of PART for this academic year. In short, we as a team of about 30 people are working together to build, from the ground up, a plane that is able to autonomously take off, fly approximately 12 miles, autonomously identify 5 targets on the ground and drop 5 corresponding payloads to within a high degree of accuracy, and land. This is an incredible and on going project that is still early in the process.

In this club, I am specifically part of the Airframe division. Here, I hold several different roles. I am the designer of the nose gear (A current work in progress as we redesign to use carbon fiber). I am on a subteam of about 6 people working on a Y-tail quick-connect system that is to be designed into the fuselage. I am also one of the builder/fixers of the test benches, of which we currently have 3 (2 planes of varying size and a hexacopter), and actively involved in the actual flight tests on our testing days, helping to build the drone on-site, pre-flight check, and also following the planes from an FPV drone (that I also built) for some air to air footage! I am hoping to get involved even further, as this is probably my favorite club this year. In the coming weeks we are making the carbon fiber molds for wings and fuselage.