Inside an unsuspicious and deserted-looking room in the Engineering Building III, a handful of students gather around a cluttered table. Sitting atop the table amidst all the clutter, unmoved, is a mean flying machine- or as they call it, the ARCWULF.
The members of the Aerial Robotics Club, or ARC, are the proud makers of the ARCWULF. The plane won first place last June among 25 teams who participated in the international level of a competition organized by the Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International.
This year, the team looks forward to holding its position at the top, while trying to put forth an even better performance in the competition.
“This will be our ninth year of participation. We have been there every year of the competition since it first started in 2003,” John Freeze, a senior in aerospace engineering and the president of ARC, said.
According to Freeze, the competition usually involves the unmanned aerial vehicle taking aerial images of the terrain below, then transmitting the pictures to the base station along with its GPS coordinates. The images are then put together to form a map of the terrain.
“We designed and built this plane and we put in a lot of hardware and software so that it can fly itself. It has also got a camera mounted on the gimbal such that it is always facing the ground, and as we fly, it can take pictures of the land below,” Freeze said.
Though the club has around 30 members on paper, only a handful actively works in the lab a few days a week. The team members value the hands-on experience designing and building gives them.
“I get more real world, hands-on experience working on electrical systems for the plane than I can ever get in class,” Jacob Ward, a senior in computer engineering, said. Ward is in charge of the embedded software and hardware that runs on the ARCWULF.
Members feel working with the club gives them the exact kind of experience that is desired by the industry.
“It is basically the same design, build, fly kind of programs that you will hear a lot in the industry circles. If you have experience in such kind of work, it is almost equivalent of doing an internship or a co-op,” Erik Gutekunst, a senior in aerospace engineering, said.
Though ARC is traditionally associated with mechanical and aerospace engineering, the club’s work is also associated with electrical and computer engineering.
”One common misconception about the group is that it is specifically an aerospace-mechanical group, whereas it’s really not. In fact, it’s moreso electrical,” Gutekunst said.
Once the plane is built and flying fine, the team turns to embedded hardware and programming to ensure functionality of the vehicle, according to Gutekunst.
Last year at the AUVSI competition, N.C. State achieved 1stplace in overall mission performance, 6thplace for journal paper, 8thplace for oral presentation, the Good Samaritan award for helping Florida University in accomplishing the mission and a total of $9,700.
“Most of our funding comes from the competition prize money – last year we won over $9,000 for the first prize. Besides, N.C. State funds us about $2,000,” Freeze said.
The club was also funded by Piccolo systems, which provided them with the autopilot for the airplane, according to Freeze.
The team tests its planes over the cow pasture area of Perkins Field. The field is named after Dr. Albert Perkins, a distinguished University professor and flight researcher who taught for many years. Perkins Field is located just outside of Butner, N.C.
Looking forward to the 9thannual AUVSI competition in June 2011, Joseph Moster, a senior in aerospace engineering, feels Mississippi State University, Utah State University and Embry Riddle Aeronautical University are the most formidable competitors for the team this year.
“Utah State won the year before we did. Mississippi were the runners-up last year and Embry Riddle sends in two teams,” Moster said.
