Aerial Vehicle UAV - Schedule Design Proposal for Project Dragonfly X1 - Example

SCHEDULE DESIGN PROPOSAL FOR PROJECT DRAGONFLY X1(uninhabited aerial vehicle UAV) Intelligent Aircraft Co. (IACo.) Sam Morris, Bob Lake, Peter Van Zandt Purpose We formally present the schedule design proposal for prototype and commercial production of the uninhabited aerial vehicle (UAV) auction bid of the European Union for aerospace operational programs. The platform Dragonfly, a UAV technology can be potentially used in many aerial applications such as Aerial surveys for agriculture, traffic monitoring and pollution control Law enforcement purposes Meteorological data collection Inexpensive and efficient experimental research platforms for flight control systems Real time command ad control for a variety of combat situations Autonomous target detection, interception, identification and classification Reconnaissance missions for gathering information Background Many a times the non-existence of such unmanned vehicles for the various aerial operations mentioned above either by government agencies such as the military or private firms such as ranch owners constitutes a great deal of limitations to growth and efficiency in these fields due to the difficulty involved with maneuvering with manned platforms. They are a promising area for military and commercial applications due to their advanced capabilities and flexibilities. Besides having abilities to hover, which allows for accessibility to areas otherwise inpenetratable to the vehicles, a UAV can perform tasks that would be exceedingly difficult and dangerous for a manned platform. Possible use includes close-up inspection of power lines, filming movies and cleaning up of hazardous waste sites. Problem Statement Design an uninhabited aerial vehicle code named Dragonfly X1.The platform would be able to execute various remote-controlled aerial maneuvers which include but not limited to autonomous take-off, hover, trajectory following and landing. This would require the following: Prepare preliminary functional and operability requirements and create preliminary create preliminary design configuration Prepare and distribute surface models Perform aerodynamics analysis and evaluation Create initial structural geometry and prepare structural geometry and notes for finite-element structural stimulation Develop structural design conditions Perform weight and inertia analyses Perform structure and compatibility analyses and evaluation Develop balanced free body diagrams and external applied loads Establish internal load distributions, evaluate structural strength stiffness and life and preliminary manufacturing planning and analyses Design Constraints The project should be able to go according to schedule. Interdependence and parallelism between activities must be taken into consideration as it would affect project completion time and costs. Specifically the in the activity of structural geometry and manufacturing planning, there could be iteration about 30per cent of the time due to incompatibility problems i.e. the initial geometry was not appropriate for manufacturability purposes. But there are case scenarios for time improvement with increased cost. Metrics The following metrics can be used in order to determine the validity of various solutions to the platform design: 1. Cost The helicopter used in the project must be available for a minimum of cost. Working parts usually cover tens or hundred of structural systems, each doing a small task. While our goal is not that lofty, in order to develop a unmanned helicopter, we will have design for commercialization. This will make minimizing the cost of each of the UAVs in the project a high priority of the project. 2. Stability One of the greatest properties of a sensor network is how functions and data are distributed over the network. Each robot only does a small part of the job, and combined, they do the task. Any sensor network we design must have the ability to function whether or not all units are functional. 3. Size In order to effectively design a UAV project that can effectively exercise the maneuver capabilities, one of two goals must be met. Either the area we test the prototype must be large enough to require different manipulations over the entire cover the area, or more importantly the platform must be small and compact enough in respect to the area of coverage. 5. Adaptability This is one of the strong points for this project. The aerial vehicle must adapt to different situations and conditions and be able to remotely retrieve objects. . Work in this Field This is a relatively new field with little known information on the various progress on the work so far. Design Validation There would be expediting action on the activities some of which would run concurrently due to interdependence. Testing and evaluation would be done as described above with minimum iteration. Societal, Environment, and Safety Analysis This requires extensive study which would be appropriately assigned during the curse of testing and evaluation. Feasibility Study Project Schedule – 8 weeks 1 day Team Meeting – 5/06/02 Start Date – 5/06/02 End Date – 7/24/02 *note: See Gantt chart for schedule details Project Deliverables Bi-weekly Report – Unstated Critical Design Review – 6/26/02 Final Report and Demo – 7/17/02 Objectives/Statement of Work The objective of this study is to show that the proposed UAV platform is physically, technically, and economically feasible in the time available. According to the initial budget plans, projects are limited to 243(#1000). Because of the limited number to only a prototype the calculated budget of the mentioned amount is within reason. The R&D has developed a prototype, the Dragonfly X1, to demonstrate the practicality of using inexpensive robot helicopter. It was a small autonomous helicopter,consisiting for a heavily modified remote control model helicopter with a 30 ccm engine. Navigational sensing was provided entirely by a pair of Timble Global positioning System operating using differential Carrier phase calculations. By using four different antennas, the Dragon X1 was able to sense its altitude as well as position with GPS.As an additional sensor; it has onboard camera system to gather additional information about its environment. As seen in the Gant chart, we should have enough time to complete all design objectives. We should also have some room for unexpected problems if any occur. The mistakes may come from trying to integrate all of the different parts of the platform into a whole, and the parallelism among activities, but there should be enough time to do the project design. Management Team organization will be loosely based. Decisions will be made by group consensus, and then carried out. Tasks will be delegated based on who can do the job effectively and quickly.Sppeciality engineers would dominate the design and analyses If there are design disagreements, we will either ask the profession for advising, or see if some form of compromise can be made. The project will be managed under a cycle type of qualifications. Each unit will be planned, designed, and tested. Then, all units will be integrated, then the whole will be tested. Scheduling Our timetable looks like the following: As shown, there is plenty of time for both design and testing of different components in the system, as well as testing of these various components. Each unit of the project has been checked for dependencies with all of the others. Most of our work units will take two weeks. There is some leeway in the testing, as it is an on going, continuous process. It will be done as units are completed. The presentation itself will be done after the software and hardware is finished. There are several dependencies for various subunits of the process. The structural geometry must be designed and evaluated (A4) before any of the other work can be done. The work on free body diagrams could be expedited on when making notes for finite structural elements. The aero dynamic design and weight-inertia analyses are all independent of each other. The expected completion date without interdependence would be 80 days. Then with the interdependence, there is the event of executing activities earlier tan schedule in trying to do ones it is dependent on. In other words activities which have the results of some the preceding activities as their inputs would have a shorter completion time. The new completion time would then become 57 days. 2) Activities A4,A5,and A7 could have their execution schedule shortened by virtue of their significant technical dependent on the results from some of the activities preceding them in form of inputs.A4is dependent on outcomes from A1,A2 and is a direct output of a later activity.A5 further is dependent on the preceding A4 which has inputs from the preceding activities as explained plus the first activity A1.then the last one A7has A1,A2,A3 and A6 as inputs with A6 an activity dependent on A4.Thus hastened effort can be made on their dependent input activities which would ultimately shorten their execution time. Uncertainty usually affects the project completion through delays in the effective calculated cost of project design and the shortening of tasks due to iterations of processes due to structural and geometrical incompatibility of design components and in testing systems Budget Our Budget will look like the following: Activity Estimated cost(#1000) Scenario cost increase A1 A2 A3 A4 A5 A6 A7 A8 A9 A10 15 3 8 140 12 10 22 23 90 22 20 18 16 Total 243 Sub-total 54 + 243=297 Range 243-297 Read More