Design and Implementation of Telemetry and Autonomous Control Systems for Two Remotely Controlled Aircraft

The design and implementation of a data acquisition system for a remote controlled (RC) mothership airplane and an autopilot control system for an unpowered glider aircraft is presented. These telemetry and autopilot systems have been applied to Union College’s SAE Aero team, which designed and built an RC plane for competition in the 2019 SAE Aero Design competition, hosted in Van Nuys, California. The mothership telemetry system uses sensors to gather altitude, airspeed and 3-axis force data, stores this data on an SD card, and sends this flight information to a ground receiver station via wireless radio communication. This acquired data has been used to verify design configurations, prove calculations and to help with design improvements. Currently, the autopilot system incorporates a commercially available drone flight controller that was adapted to work with a fixed wing aircraft. After testing, the telemetry system has been shown to take accurate data readings, and operates consistently up to a range of 0.4 mi, which exceeds the maximum safe operating distance the competition requires. Experimental flights with the autopilot system controlling a powered RC test plane have shown the system is capable of successfully completing autonomous flights and landings.