At the end of the Spring 2010 semester, Mark and I built (and rebuilt, and rebuilt, and rebuilt) a small UAV. The UAV was controlled by two Arduino microcontrollers and a whole suite of sensors for measuring orientation, airspeed, and altitude.

We tested the UAV in the parking garage underneath the Stata building. Flying inside has some benefits like no wind, but some major drawbacks… watch the video for some spectacular crashes.

Testing our UAV “Wild Goose”, Spring 2010 at MIT

Eventually the craft was able to take off, maintain steady level flight, then descend and land gracefully! Very fun project. Many thanks to Prof. Dave Darmofal in the Aero-astro department at MIT for approving funding for our small-but-extremely-time-consuming project.

Here’s our Project Proposal, and the Final Report.