Hi Everyone.

UAV Challenge Medical Express is a competition where teams from around the world build UAVs in order to retrieve a Blood sample from Outback Joe, a sick farmer in the countryside of Queensland, Australia. It is considered to be the world's toughest drone competition.

Team Aero BMSCE is a group of Engineering Students from B.M.S. College of Engineering, Bengaluru. We received a GO Decision from the Organizers at UAVC after the first deliverable was submitted. We now have until April 11, 2018, to submit our Second Deliverable which is a detailed technical report, and a video demonstrating autonomous flight capability.

I started this thread to log our progress, and to take help from the RCI Community when we face some problems.

The Problem Statement:

Outback Joe is at his property in remote Queensland, Australia and has been feeling unwell. He has had a remote consultation with his doctor using video conferencing, and his doctor has requested some blood tests be done as soon as possible. Joe is well prepared, has a home sample taking kit, and has taken his blood sample. The challenge is now to get the blood sample to the lab. Joe’s property is very remote and to make matters worse, it has been cut off by floodwaters.

Teams are invited to attempt to retrieve a blood sample from the remote Outback Joe and return it to base where medical staff will be waiting to analyse it. Teams are encouraged to develop systems that can carry out the mission in a fully autonomous manner using Type 2 Autonomy.

Deliverables
Entrants are required to submit a short technical report (known as Deliverable 1) that describes the proposed system design and safety considerations. Later a more detailed technical report is required (Deliverable 2) that outlines a team’s design approach, methodology for remote landing, and operational and safety procedures along with a flight demonstration video was submitted.  Finally an Autonomous Flight Record that documented a minimum of five hours of autonomous flight has to be provided along with a Safety Case document (Deliverable 3). The top-twenty teams that pass the Deliverable 3 checkpoint will be invited to the competition.

Scoring
Points will be awarded based on the mission performance including the accuracy of the remote landing, technical documentation, and the team’s answers to questions from the judges prior to the mission.

Prizes
The team to achieve the highest points total and have also completed the mission, and after the competition is complete, will be declared the winner and will receive AUD$ 25,000.

If the winning team has completed the mission using Type 2 Autonomy then they will receive a bonus of AUD$25,000.

If the winning team also completes the mission containing Dynamic No Fly Zones they will receive an additional bonus of AUD$25,000.

The maximum prize for the winning team is therefore AUD$75,000.

The team achieving the highest points total, whether or not they have completed the mission, will be awarded the Rod Walker Trophy, presented in memory of Professor Rod Walker, co-founder of the UAV Challenge.

The detailed rules and requirements can be found here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5JgqjkRDqw8bDl5Q1p6Mzd3TlU/view

All the best Topalle. I hope you succeed. You sparked my interest when you first posted about this and since then I have been researching and reading up a lot on UAV/UAS technology and stuff. Thank you.

Regards,
Nitesh.

@topalle

Hi Srinivas,
You've probably seen this. If not, it's worth a look for preliminary ideas.
https://pixhawk.org/platforms/vtol/fun_cub_quad_vtol

Best of luck.

Besides the build log, consider sharing your ideas/ thoughts (if not confidential ) as your project proceeds. May interest many members!

You have also probably seen this one already but this is also a VTOL aircraft with an hybrid propulsion system.

http://www.altiuas.com

Lovely modern aircraft in link posted by Nitesh.

In 2003, Dr Maynard Hill did a 40 hour, 1900km transatlantic flight!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spirit_of_Butts%27_Farm

Engine was an OS 61 (10cc), with the carb from an OS Pet 10 (1.5cc)
Fuel consumption about 1ml per minute! (About 1/20 of the normal rate in a 60 size model!)

You can check out a diesel model engine to compare its milage with a glow engine

Have you shortlisted any basic parameters yet? Like size, weight, etc?

Thanks for the inputs Nitesh and Iyer sir.
We are completely self funded, other than a few materials and spare parts from the college.
We we're intitally planning to go for a hybrid VTOL Pusher, but now we are looking at an all electric aircraft with 5Kg MTOW.

XUAV Talon is one airframe that we are considering buying in order to speed up the development and Remove the variable of error caused by us building the aircraft.
The Kit costs around 8800 Rupees on Banggood.com but I don't have any idea if we will be able to import it without customs issues.

http://mozzie.readthedocs.io/en/latest/Overview.html#

This is a guide on how to convert the XUAV Mini Talon to a VTOL for the UAV Challenge Medical Express.

We are planning to go for the larger 1700+mm wingspan version of the XUAV Talon. We might add wing extensions to increase the span to 2000mm too. Because of the added weight of the VTOL motors, and batteries needed for them.

I was going through the exact guide today and was going to post it as well. Very interesting. You can check on rcbazaar. There are a few other models in stock which might serve your purpose.

All the best,
Nitesh.

We Have a Paragon Trainer (0.46 size) lying unused with us, so I was wondering what would be the challenges in converting that to a VTOL Long Range UAV.
Any Inputs?

Other than that, if we were to go for a XUAV Mini Talon, the cost breakdown would be something like this
1) Bare Airframe - 5000
2) Motors - 6000
3) ESCs - Available in stock with us
4) Batteries -  8000-10000
5) Flight Controller - 6000
6) Servos and Props- Available in stock
7) Radio Links - 5000-8000
8 ) Raspberry Pi - Available with us.
9) GoPro - Available with us.

All this is for one aircraft, and if we crash, which we definitely will, we will have to replace components, which would drive up the cost.

BTW, as a part of the procedure for getting a stall at MakerFaire Bengaluru, we made a video with a demo model showing how a VTOL aircraft would look, and we used the Paragon Trainer itself.

Check it out here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BDO8k0-09fkYN8Sg-TZVjhGV99cZg0M4/view?usp=sharing

Narration by my friend

The Paragon Trainer is a 0.46 ~ 0.55 size trainer.
It has a Wing Area of 44.3 dm2 and recommended Wing Loading of 65g/dm2
Which means, the Total weight would be around 2.8 KG

Assuming 150W per KG as the Power, We need 336W of Power.
We have an Avionic c3536 1100kv Motor with us.
Considering a 4S 10000 mAH LiPo Battery, We can get a maximum of 595 W of power with a 9x4.5 Prop according to the specifications. and Thrust would be 2KG

Assuming you overcome the hardware limitation of flying it for the required duration with the required payload, how do you plan to handle the software side? The image recognition software and the mission planning? What radio modem do you plan to use? Are you going to use a companion computer? What Autopilot software are you going to use? Do you have programmers on your team?

All the best
Nitesh.

This means that the stall speed is around 45kmph

So, we can assume Cruise Speed = ~ 70kmph, (Slower than we need, because we need a cruise speed of around 90-100kmph to complete the mission within time)

@rcrcnitesh

We plan on using a Raspberry Pi to do the machine vision part (Recognizing the pattern and Geotagging). We have tested the code at small heights, with a GoPro and a laptop running python. We are yet to test it with a Raspberry Pi. It seems achievable because others have done it.

The Autopilot will be ArduPilot. We have a couple of Programmers on our team. But one great thing about being in college is that you have this pool of 4000 students out of which you'll find someone to help you out if your team can't figure it out!

We Plan on using a 900MHz Telemetry Radio, but not sure about it. We are yet to take a decision on it.

Can someone help me out with figuring out how much thrust will be required during cruise? This will help determine amp draw during cruise and endurance.

I used eCalc to find a suitable motor, ESC, Prop combination and turns out the Paragon isn't a good aircraft for this mission.
It is heavy at 1.5kg empty weight without any electronics and just adding batteries would cross the recommended weight of 2.8 kg

So, We have to Design a new plane or go for the XUAV Mini Talon

What about scratch building a wing with EPP foam? Check out this video.



This is a pretty basic version but he builds a much more advanced version later.



All the best
Nitesh.

We got confirmation of our stall at Maker Faire Bengaluru!
Whoever is in Bengaluru, attend Maker Faire!
It's on the 17th and 18th of November 2017, at Bangalore Palace
It's going to be awesome!
While you are there, come say hi
I'll update the stall number once I get it.

Bro could you tell more about the pattern recognition and object Avoidance?

OpenCV and OpenMV are your answers. If you google all that you'll find the answers. DIYDrones, Ardupilot.org and many other websites. Really helpful.

Regards
Nitesh

I'll give you a detailed answer tomorrow after my last exam
Incompressible Fluid Dynamics 😂

Lol

After one month of placing the order, we finally received the Pixhawk flight Controller from Bangood.com.
Initially, we will try to use it on a sky-surfer, which we have with us, then once we are satisfied by its performance, it will be converted to VTOL.
After both of those work successfully, we would buy a XUAV Mini Talon for the final aircraft.

Till now, we have only completed the pattern recognition and geotagging, from a quadcopter. We are using a cheap 1080p action camera and a Raspberry Pi for this purpose.

Which pixhawk did you buy? I believe the ProfiCNC Pixhawk 2.1, CUAV Pixhack V3 and Drotek Pixhawk Pro 3 all have triple redundant IMU's and are extremely high quality. If I was going to buy a Pixhawk for something like this I'd buy either of these.
Congratulations on getting those objectives to work, lots more to go xP. Is there any reason why you have chosen the XUAV Talon besides it being used in the Mozzie? Have you had a look at this http://www.rcbazaar.com/product.aspx?productid=4856? I've been googling a lot since your first post and found that a lot of people are using Skywalker planes and wings for Mapping and SAR purposes.

Waiting for this :p

All the best.
Looking forward to the next update.
Nitesh

One reason for selecting the XUAV Mini Talon is because it is the smallest and cheapest airframe that can complete such a mission. Also. it has excellent reviews from a lot of people who use it for mapping purpose.

This is the pixhawk we have purchased.
https://www.banggood.com/Pixhawk-PX4-2_4_8-Flight-Controller-32-Bit-ARM-PX4FMU-PX4IO-Combo-for-Multicopters-p-1040416.html?rmmds=search&cur_warehouse=CN

I haven't connected it and tried it yet. Might do so tomorrow.

About the code for image recognition, it is with a teammate, so I need to get it from him and post it here.

Bro how do you use an object Avoidance system of a quadcopter on a fixed wing? I mean the logic, since the flight is a vectored one in fixed wings.

It can be done, but is out of the scope of this project

I stumbled upon this talk from Andrew Tridgell of CanberraUAV and I thought you might want to have a look at it.
It seems to be a lot more work than I thought. Too many points of failure.

Any updates?

Regards
Nitesh

Hey everyone,
We've been busy preparing the SAE team all this while, so couldn't do much for this project.
We might be backing out from the competition due to financial constraints, however we are still working on completing the challenge, just not in the competition (maybe next time in 2020)

Right now we have built an FT Spear, in which we are installing the pixhawk flight controller, and testing autonomous flight.
We would be using LTE instead of Telemetry Radio on this setup

But LTE won't work for the farmer though. It is a remote place.

Not for the competition. Testing the autonomy.
But these days you get LTE almost everyday in India itself, so I guess it'll work

But not everywhere though, there are very remote places in India. Even in Kerala.

Dude IMHO, talon is a multipurpose plane. You could build a mission specific aircraft for your mission. ie, VTOL carrier. You could build one with fibreglass. So that, you could save weight on many places and could scatter lipos everywhere.

We did think of that. A thrust vectoring belly sitter, (dual motor with thrust vectoring) FT Spear scaled to 200%

Something of that sort would fit the purpose well.

Don't build the ft spear though. But the flying wing design is fantastic. What I want to say is that, Make a flying wing , all electronics in the wing , cells of batteries broken into panels to increase surface area. The body part should be under the cg, in that part you could put the cargo. The plane should balance itself without payload , so you won't have much problem with balancing. And , it should be a quad , the two sections of the quad part should go midway through the wing, It should be aerodynamic to avoid as much drag. You could put the antennas away to the tips.

.

@nitesh I said about the sections of the arms where the motor part comes , as most of the vtols I saw on the internet had a very badly designed arms.

@ topalle
I do hope you guys attempt again in 2020. I really wanted you guys to win this. I am excited about every such competition 😁

@ AL HAM SHARI
Why would you not suggest the FT spear design? It's an excellent design platform.
Further, the o/p is only testing autonomous flight.

Why do you need to argue your point on and on and on?
This is complete childish behavior in my opinion. I have talked to your personally some time before. You were not like this. Please do understand. My intent is not to offend you but to make you understand.

Whenever a person makes a post, it is expected that he will give his suggestion, the reason behind that suggestion and some form of proof or reference to someone who has already tried your suggestion.

What Is the point of giving one vague answer and keep making amendments to the answer as other members point out the shortcomings of the answer.

Topalle is in Bangalore and just TESTING using LTE which is clearly stated by him. He just wants to see autonomous flight working with LTE.
If he would have been in some rural area, then your point could be acceptable. But then, he would also not be on RC India then. As nitesh said, the coverage is still good thanks to companies like Airtel, jio and Idea.
Regards

@prabal No Offense but , I didn't actually go against using FT Spear for testing, I suggested to build a Plane themselves for their competition and FT Spear isn't that good of a carrier , think of it, would any normal guy know how to open and put their package and close the FT Spear? Or will they choose for a simple open and close part dedicated to cargo? You know the  answer. These guys are doing an international competition, So would it be pretty cool If they plan and build a UAV for the specific mission , which saves costs and time? I accept that I argued on and on , but I believe I'm right even if it's childish.

And, I'm working on to tell what I intend to tell,
Regards.

Again, did you read what the o/p has written?He is simply using the spear to test autonomous equipment.


He said that he would modify the 200% scaled Spear design. And if it suits his needs then why not?
After all, the spear is a beautiful, versatile flying wing
No international team will use a pre-existing design unless it's the best there is available and suits all the needed parameters. Its quite obvious

Have you even seen the FT Spear? I don't think so. Anyone will know where to put the package.
Attaching a image for your reference. It's quite obvious that there is only one place for the package to go. The middle portion. It can be marked as well.
We are not chasing "cool" status here. We search for practicality and usability. Won't the time spent in designing and fabricating a new plane be saved? Further is would Cost MORE as you require 2-3 prototypes. Modifications to an already existing plan is so very easy. Print it at 200% after tweaking some details and voila!

 .

@topalle,
Hi Srinivas,
Perhaps you too feel that many times members post their opinions instead of their experience!
Regards

Iyer sir,
i know it is quite irritating. I was the one who corrected AL HAM SHARI and started this long debate. i am at fault.
i am sorry. i should have PMed him instead. i was the focii of irritation.
but i get quite irritated when i see these kinds if posts. If someone is just posting for the sake of posting and the information posted, will be more harmful than useful, i just feel compelled to correct the person. It is better for both the person posting and the person asking.
No offense, but i always say posting nothing is better than posting wrong or incomplete answers. This is not a correct practice.
 
@ topalle sorry for hijacking over your thread with my bugging and buzzing.

I wont post anymore until absolutely necessary. I hope that AL HAM SHARI understands what i wanted to convey.
Regards

Hi, did you participate in the challenge? can you share some details on your build progress (photos)? I'm building a VTOL tailsitter, not for Medical express, but for aerial mapping. I would like to know what you settled on in the end.

We had to stop the project due to funding issues; however, I am planning to participate in 2020 again