From Albatross

Albatross - The Kiwi UAV

This site details Albatross, a fixed wing UAV (unpiloted aerial vehicle, or robotic airplane) designed in New Zealand by John Stowers and Hugo Vincent. The project started as our final year project of our Bachelor of Engineering (electrical and computer engineering) degrees at the Univerity of Canterbury, which we have both now completed. The site is a Wiki, meaning you can edit it and contribute to it from your web browser. All our code and hardware designs are open source (GPL) and can be freely downloaded from our SVN Repository.

UPDATE September 2007

Version 2 is now being developed in conjunction with the Geospatial Research Center. More development info here.

Project Statement

The goal of the project is to stabilize and control a small fixed wing aircraft through the design and implementation of an automatic pilot system.

We aim to acheive an autonomous trans-tasmn flight within the next 12-18 months.

Such UAVs find use in wide variety of fields, including:

• environmental and meteorological monitoring
• geophysical survey
• aerial photography, e.g. of real estate
• civil, military, border control surveillance
• search-and-rescue missions
• as a platform for further research and development.

The system consists of a radio-controlled model plane, housing a single board computer (Snapper) running Linux, as well as several sensors, flying the plane autonomously, and in constant communication with a ground station for monitoring and command (for some more details, please see here).

Implementation

Version1 Aircraft	Version2 Aircraft
Airframe	Airframe
Hardware	[Hardware]
Software	[Software]
Development	Development

News

hugo 04:04, 12 September 2007 (UTC) - Following an internship with the GRC, and with John starting a PhD with them, we now have a definite road map for development of Version 2 of the autopilot and UAV system.

john 01:25, 16 October 2006 (UTC) - I am now working full time on the project, at least until the start of March 2007. My primary goal for this period is to complete the Engine Board. I also want to get the Airframe design tools all working together.

john 18:33, 10 July 2006 (UTC) - Sorry about the lack of activity on the project at the moment (we have had a number of PR appearances however!). We are both busy with our masters for a few more months. I expect to continue work on the project full-time starting in September.

hugo 08:19, 9 May 2006 (UTC) - Today we were interviewed and filmed by TVNZ for One News, New Zealand's main daily news program. Watch us (streaming video) here and here.